Palette Knife Mastery Vibrant Abstract Painting without Muddy colors

1. Welcome to another wonderful class: To a new and exciting acrylic painting class. In this class, you will learn how to make this simple yet wonderful abstract painting. This class teaches you how to make bold and decisive textures with the palette knife. Hi, my name is George, and I've been a professional artist for over ten years. In the last six years, I've developed a very interesting way of teaching. That focuses on fun and engaging projects such as this. While learning about key concepts in painting. If you have never painted before, then this is the perfect class for you. With the proper guidance and encouragement, you will understand color harmony, color mixing in no time. After this class, you will never accidentally paint with muddy colors ever again. 2. Materials needed : For this course, you will need a canvas. This one is 30 by 30 centimeters. You don't need to use this specific canvas size. It can work on any other canvas, if it's a square rectangle, any kind of size, it doesn't really matter. You will need a mixing plate to mix the colors. We will be using acrylic paint. This is Amsterdam acrylic paint, titanium white. Burnt umber, also known as brown. Yellow. This is Azo yellow medium, but you can use lemon yellow with no problem. And this is carmine red, as well as some brilliant blue. If you don't have brilliant blue, you can use ultramarine and just add some white into it. You will also need a Paulette knife and a brush of any kind. It doesn't matter if it's round or if it's flat, if it's big, or if it's small. Well, don't use tiny ones. And you will need some paper towels, as well as some water. That's all you need for this course. Oh, one more thing, if you have one of these, which is a canvas board that you can paint really fast on it, and then wipe it down. It's super easy to do that. You don't have to waste an entire canvas if you don't want to learn about the color theory. You can use a piece of cardboard, just cut it. It dries even faster than this, and it teaches you about transparency because it's brown, it will teach you about transparent colors. 3. Transparent colors: First rule about color harmony, which is just fancy speak for knowing what your colors can do is that transparent and light colors go first. So yellow is a very transparent color. You can find the transparency matrix or square onto the actual bottle. Some of them don't have it, but notice here that this is a cut off square, and brown is a square that has nothing. It's just even more transparent. But due to the fact that it's a bit darker, it appears more opaque. Let's mix with the palette knife, some white into this yellow. Don't take all of the yellow and use the opposite way of the palette knife so you can easily mix the colors. It's much easier to mix like this because it teaches you that you need to push onto the color. Now, let's bring in this yellow. We don't need quite a lot. So you don't need to mix a lot of this yellow. Let's squeeze that paint off of the front of the palette knife and take some more on here. Let's make a shape and understand what the palette knife can do. Notice how it made a blob, we can also slowly take it away and make the texture a bit better. It can do smaller shapes. Like this, or even with the tip of the palette knife, if you have color on it, you can do even smaller ones. You can also do just like this to make some lines, some very straight lines. Okay. And don't be afraid at this stage to just wipe everything down, put it over and make the Beautiful shape a bit more interesting. Okay. Let's be careful not to create these kind of 90 degrees angle and very straight curves. The idea here is to have a varied edge of the color and notice how it's a bit more undefined over here, so a bit more straight and calm and a bit more crazy on the right side. Okay. We need another shape. So first of all, big one. And then we need a smaller one. Well, not connected, but even if it's connected, that's fine. We would need a smaller one, like, for instance, over on this side over here. Imagine that this is completely off, which it will be by the end. Let's grab the rest of the color that we have to create another beautiful shape. Notice how it's over here, we can balance the composition over on this side. There is no color theory involved yet, except for the fact that we are adding the transparent colors first. Okay. The color theory comes in right now where you will add some more white over this yellow and create a Niva lighter yellow. Now, wherever you put this color over the yellow, Let's first create another shape just over here. Not a big one because we don't have a lot of color created. Okay. And let's mix it once again with the other side of the palette knife, just so it's more thoroughly mixed. This forces you if you go like this, it forces you to really push on the palette knife. That's why it's more effective at mixing the colors. So let's go over some of this color right here on the middle. And these colors play very well together because well, it's just a lighter version of that color. So they are called analogous colors. Well, technically, it's just a lighter version. If we wanted to, let's first take and add some of this here. And this is the first rule of color harmony, which is the fact that color harmony is basically fancy speak for color variety and understanding what your colors can do. Now, to change this a bit, we're going to add a bit of red. That's way too much. We're going to add a bit of red. And now the analogous color contrast and color variety comes in. Now, it's very pink, so we need more yellow over it, even more. Notice how red is a very potent color because it's not so transparent. Notice over here that it's half square, so it's more potent. It also has some pluses. So these indicate that it's a deeper pigment. And notice that we've created an orange. This is a true analogous color. It's just very slowly towards another color. And these play together. I like to think of these colors as being friends. Analogous colors are friends. So if we mix them together, notice that we can even mix them on the canvas, nothing bad will happen. So slowly, gradually moving to another color will not ruin your colors. They will you can ruin a color in two directions. You can make it muddy or chalky. Chalky means that it has too much blue, and muddy means that it has too much mud, which is brown. Brown is a dark version of orange. Okay? Let's fix some of this texture slowly and add a bit more on top. Don't be afraid to add texture and to add thickness to your painting. Okay. Let's go over on this side and slowly add this color over the yellow. You can also add another different technique, which is to actually mix the colors together, and notice how if you do it quite a bit, it starts to create a bit of a gradient, depending on how you apply the color, and it looks super nice. So you can do gradients with the color as well. Let's take some of this and add it over here, creating another gradient, moving slowly towards the yellow. Notice how if I go from over here and I move towards the lighter yellow, it creates a gradient. Perfect. And we can add this color right over here to balance this shape out. Let's take some more. Focus on the edge. And in fact, we can actually take the brush and add some on the edge to fix those edges and make them nice and crisp. Even over here, because they play well together, they will be very nice. Now, you've noticed that we've added red, but the opposite way we can go in the next step is towards a green by adding a bit of blue. 4. Gradients an analogous colors: Okay. For this step, we need to clean the palette knife very thoroughly. We need to add some more yellow. Right over here. Maybe that's a bit too much and some blue, right next to it. Okay. And we have to be careful because red and blue are very far apart, and especially orange and blue. They are very far apart, and we need to focus and stay right in the yellows. We are not really allowed to go into the orange. Let me show you why. Even though it doesn't really mess it up too much, it just makes it a more earthy tone. The goal here is to teach you to stay a bit into the colors that are closer. Let's grab some white. And mix it over. Because when we've created this green, it's way too dark because we have lighter colors on the palette, and let's go with a medium green first, and we can go freely onto the yellows with no problem. They will just become a bit more yellow, the greens that we apply. Okay? Let's make sure this shape is coherent. Perfect. Let's grab some more paint. Can go a bit over the orange. No problem. And especially because you have a lot of thickness in your palette knife. Let's grab a bit more and go over on this side. Especially because it's very yellowy. The orange is very yellowy. Notice how we can make a gradient by going slowly into the yellow. Okay. Let's fix a bit more of the shape by grabbing some green from over here or from the palette because this is a very straight shape, and we want it a bit more defined, a bit more nice. Now we can add a bit of white over this and a bit of yellow. So we're going even more closer to the yellow that you've applied in the first step steps, actually. Yeah, and mix it thoroughly with the other side, if I remember. I didn't pick up the right place to mix this color. Here. It would have been easier, but I put the wrong color over there. Now, this one, you can even go onto the lighter versions and notice how well they played together. And they can compliment each other and they make the color so much more complex. You can add it over here. Let's add it to the edge and slowly build that shape smaller. You don't have to paint very fast and apply paint very fast. You can actually have more control by just going slower. And you can even go faster by going slower because you have so much control, you don't need to fix many mistakes. So you understand what your tools. Going slower gives you more control. It's easier. Okay? It's a smaller shape, and we can go with this color over the greens as well. We can even mix them if we want to create a different shade. And over here, we can create a different shade by mixing straight onto the color palette. And the color palette, I mean, the beautiful canvas. Now, with this color, we can also well, let's just take some of it from here. And you can start to see you can make this mistake if you want, or you can try it on the board, this one, or this one. Let's start to put it on here. Let's see what happens if we do this with the orange. It's not very far, but it's nearing a color that is undefined and not really vibrant. It's a very beautiful color, in my opinion, but it doesn't have the vibrancy and the texture and everything else that this has because it's a bit more close to opposite colors, red and green. Okay? For this next step, you are going to go into some other colors that are a bit more towards the blue. 5. Turquoise harmony: Tow, until now, we haven't let the painting dry. That's because we've worked with analogous colors, very close analogous colors that play well together, and orange, yellow, and green. Now, because we will be taking some blue and some white to create a lighter beautiful blue turquoise blue. In fact, let's grab some yellow and mix it over so that this turquoise blue, depending on the blue you chose, this mixing We'll need more white if you use the ultramarine blue. It actually needs more white right now, but it doesn't matter because we're going to use it just on the green parts. T over here. Don't worry if it's too fuzzy. We can add more color on top and make some shapes over the green. They play very well together because this is a blue and blue and green are analogous colors. They are not complimentary. Okay. Just fixing that corner, and let's go over here, but not on the corner, so we don't repeat the same thing. We can go over the light, green, no problem because turquoise and green are very close together. But being very careful this time to not go into the orange. Okay. Let's define that shape a bit more. You can go very close if you want to the orange, but be careful not to pick up any color. Okay. And we can add a bit more of this right here on the middle, building like a bridge in between these colors, and let's create some more interesting edges. Notice how we are barely touching the canvas. So it doesn't happen So something like this doesn't happen, which is just mushy color. The more you press and you have other colors into the knife, the more they are apparent. Like, notice over here, there's a lot of pressing. If I gently put it on, it will look nicer. Now, a cool trick right now is that you can grab the paint brush with a tiny bit of water. That's a bit too much. And it's not a very soft brush. I should have been using another brush. Yeah, it's fine. We can clean up some of these edges by adding some water right next to them with the paint. We can even take some paint, and we can add some water next to the edges to soften them up. We can even go right over here because we can have a bit more precision and really go next to the orange. It's not the end of the world if we touch the orange. But we are getting rid of some of the white onto the canvas. Some of the white of the canvas. And you can clean the brush, and because all the painting is wet, because we haven't let it dry yet. We can do the same over some greens. You can use water or you can skip the water if you want, if you have areas like this or like this, where you can just grab some of the paint around and fix some of the little edges and bits of color. Notice how right over here, there is a bit of white. We can go in. We can take some of that green and blend it inside. It doesn't really matter. It creates a bit more contrast because you have textured areas, very crisp areas and softer ones around. Let's clean the brush so we can go over on this side where the orange is and create a softer n edge because it was too crazy. And even if you mess up or do a mistake, that's fine because you can always just add a bit more color afterwards. Now, for the next step, you don't need to let it dry. We're going to go closer to a lighter blue. We're going to add some white and the blue we have, and we're going to mix a lighter version of blue. 6. Ocean blue: The next step, Let's just add some white over on the palette. You don't need to clean the palette knife because it has some turquoise in it, and turquoise is very good for what we want. Even if you don't have the turquoise on the palette or on the knife, you can add just blue and white. Notice how this will be a very light blue that has a bit of turquoise. If you don't have it, well, let's add more white. We need a quite light. Okay. And You can add a bit of yellow if you want to make it more towards the turquoise. But it's a lighter version of this color now, so let's add a bit more blue, so we make it more blue. And a bit more white. Okay. It's not entirely as light as I wanted, but we can add a bit more white into it to if I mixed it like this, it would have been so much easier. Okay. And now we have the color. It's not that light, but it's lighter than the color from the tube. This one can go very, very easily over the tos, no problem over the touris. So we have no problem adding this color over the turquoise and going and adding shapes like these ones. You can go over the yellow, but not that much because it will create the green, so you want to hold your color clean. Okay. And let's go over here and add a bit more. Perfect. Now, this is very straight, so we need a bit of texture. And over here, we can close the shape. Perfect. Now, let's add some smaller portions of this color over the turquoise, making some small shapes. Maybe not that thick, but I'm going to take it away and add it. You can even add it in between the transitions where the green and yellow meat. So you have a bit more variety, and then let's fix this by first cleaning the palette knife a bit, and let's fix it over. Okay. Perfect, and now we can add a small beautiful shape over top. In this one. And let's add some more blue into this blue. So that we have a darker version of the blue. This one can go easily on the turquoise, but it goes even better over the beautiful light blue. You can even mix it if you want to have a more uniform color. Okay. Let's add a bit more texture over top. And let's go over on this side and create some shapes over here. Let's add just with the tip of the palette knife, some textures going this way, whips as bad. Let's add more over here, so they don't seem like straight lines, and even over here. Okay. Don't worry about the straight lines. That's fine. And now we can add this very close to the orange and use the same trick with the brush to just go and add it with the corner of the brush, super close, even if you pick up some, that's fine. Okay? And let's close some of the gaps by going with the brush and going over the areas there are fuzzy and messy. Okay. And over here, Perfect. And over here, you can go a bit more into the yellow. It's no problem. Let's make sure that let's take some more color and make sure that this yellow is present. So it's a very beautiful and small shape, and we can accentuate it by going very close and making a sharp edge around it, the same over on this side. Perfect. And let's continue by doing this one over here, going towards the yellow. Let's leave some space for a purple or something like that. Maybe not over next to the green. And going over here, and we are slowly going and adding this beautiful blue color. So in some other places, you can even pick some of the turquoise and add it next to it. Let's not just make that same shape twice. Okay. And we can go from the outside to create another shape. We can even grab some water and some more paint. And create a more variety of shape by adding and using the beautiful brush. Okay. In the next step, we are going to get closer and closer to an orange, but first we need purples. 7. Color and contrast: Let's clean the brush first because we don't need it with this turquoise. Squeeze a bit of water onto a napkin. And let's grab, even though you have blue over here, let's grab some red, not a lot, and some blue. Notice how the turquoise is doing something to the color. That's fine. We need a less intense purple. Purples are usually very dark, so this is a good opportunity to show you that these colors are very close together, except for the yellow, maybe, which is very light. So let's add a bit more red into it. Just a bit more. So it's very intense, a bit more intense purple. Let's mix it thoroughly. It does have some turquoise, so it will not damage the blue and the turquoise. You can go with this over the blue, no problem. Notice how it's going and creating this beautiful, nice, dark purple color, even if you mix it quite thoroughly. Perfect. And you can even go over some of the lighter version of the color, like over here with no problem. Being careful to not go into the greens, into the oranges yet. Let's stick to the blue colors. Okay. And let's take some more of this color. Maybe add it over where we sat, like over here. Let's way too much. And let's add it over on this side as well. Being careful not to go in the orange. Let's fix this texture slowly. And once you fix this texture. You can focus in on the other shape over here to take some of its texture. Let's make another shape over here because we have a lot of space. Okay. And now let's add some more red into the color, and some white, even though it has a bit of turquoise into it. Let's add some white. Us making a lighter version of this purple. Because you've added darkness, you need to add some lightness as well in the same color. Let's add more red into it. Turn it a bit more pink, even more. Let's grab a bit more. Okay. Notice how it's a bit grayish. That's just because there is a bit of turquoise and blue left in the area underneath and on the palette knife. But that's fine because it's a bit less of a transition from the darker version of this that we've added here. Let's add it over top. Of course, it's going to really go very well over the darker version. But it's going to go slightly well over the blues because it's just going to make it a bit more blue, so we can add it over on this side as well. Let's mix a bit more over here and focus on that edge. Perfect. Let's mix it again. And we can go over here a bit more freely because it's a big space. Being careful not to go into the orange. You can go slower and into the yellow. No yellow and no orange, because they are complimentary colors, and they do not play with each other. They are not really friends. If they are put together, they don't compliment each other. No, they do compliment each other, but only if they are dry. If one of them is dry. We can even go into this corner, even though it's a green, green is almost fine, almost, I say, but not entirely fine. But we can get away by taking a bit more color afterwards and adding it. So thickness does matter. The painting is still wet almost everywhere except the yellow, which is good because we are now working with purple. So in this manner, understanding what your colors and how if you slowly and gradually go, you can keep your painting very vibrant and textured and lush and beautiful by being very careful on how you transition from color to color. And you can have a full color range by going from one to the other and slowly bridging the gap on the color wheel. These will go with reds and oranges. In the next step, you will create some deeper reds, and afterwards, some oranges thus creating an entire beautiful circle from yellow to all the colors of the rainbow. So you've understood exactly how to move towards a different color. 8. Muddy colors are sometimes good, Thank you!: Okay. Let's grab some red. We've cleaned the color, the palette knife. We would need some cleaner red, but this red is fine. And we're going to mix it right over here, even though there is a bit of yellow there. That's fine. Notice how dark it is. This can go entirely freely over the light and even over the dark purple you've created. Notice how it just lightens up or darkens up. Okay. So we can go over and add it around here. No problem. Notice how it's just creating a beautiful more mute color of this variety. Let's add it over top, so we add some texture of pure color, and we can go, Oh, no, I picked up some white and some yellow. So let's grab some more of this color and add a bit more texture. Okay. And to finish off a bit of this color, we can add it over here. We can go over the orange, no problem because this is such a powerful red. Doesn't really matter. And orange and red are very close, so we can go over the orange with no problems. Even if they mix, they are creating beautiful colors, since the colors are friends. They are Wonderful analogous colors. Okay. And now let's add some yellow into this red, even though there isn't a lot of red over there, it's enough to make an orange. Let's see if we can add a bit more. Yes. Okay. Mix it thoroughly. It will be a darker version of the orange, and this one can go over yellows and oranges. No problem, even over red. So we can add it right over here. Notice how it's significantly darker. Okay. And over here, no problem and over the yellows. You can even go in here. And let's add a bit more texture, so we have something to play with when we go over for the brush. Let's add a bit more over here. And you can even go a bit over the green. It's no problem. But don't go into the blue, especially if it's thick and wet. Because this light yellow, light green is very light. It doesn't make the color strange. Let's go over on this side and add and close the gaps. You can close close them very closely and even overlap over the yellow and over the orange. You can even fix some of the area if you want. Okay. Now, over here, let's add a bit of orange over the yellow and close to the blue. Now, from here, there are two choices. We can let it dry and go and add more. I don't like this. Let's take it off and add some yellow overtop. We have two choices. We can add more colors and bridge the gap with the brush and also with some colors, or we can let it dry and bridge the gaps the other way around. Depending on what you want to do and how much time you have, you will choose the method you want. So I'm going to choose to just go over and brush some of this beautiful orange right here. And after I brushed it, we can add more texture with yellow over top or with another color that plays very well with. So don't worry if the things that you are Bridging are not really nice textured colors. Notice how we are picking some of the red, so we can actually go over the red over here, into the oranges, no problem, and into the purples, we can bridge that gap. Okay. And we can go over on this side since we have a purple right now. So it's the same color theory. We are moving the brush. So now we're adding a bit of more muted colors. We are moving the brush from orange, red, purple. And then now we're going into the blues and the turquoises. First, the blues, so darker blue will be a great choice. Let's also turn the brush, so we know exactly what color we have. Let's go over here because there is a darker blue. We are picking up some of that blue. If you don't have it, you can always recreate it on the canvas. Let's go now over the lighter blue. Being careful not to go into the orange. So you don't even need to clean the brush if you know a bit how the colors interact and you slowly move in between them in between the shades of color. Okay? Perfect. Now, if you really want to learn something nice, it would be to understand, let's pick up some of this quite over here. It would be the fact that you don't always need vibrant colors. So you can also do a bit of blending. Let's take some water actually and do a bit of blending until we get a gray or a brown or something like that that we can use in other areas to make a better painting. Like, the painting needs some grays and other colors as well. So let's go over here, slowly moving towards a brown, and this brown would go nicely over here because it's a softer transition in between the colors, and we can go over with it over here. So we're just looking for white. Let's add some water, and we're looking just for white and bridging the gap. The more water you add, the more transparent the color will become. So this, even if it's gray, it will dry out very light and transparent. So you add some transparency over the colors, so you mute them down. Okay? Let's go over here. And in a few minutes, it will dry, and you will see exactly what it means to have these grays. I'm going to show you by doing a beautiful magic trick, which is a cut, And let's add some over here. I'm just finishing the painting by focusing on the edges. But I will be doing a cut to show you at the end. But before then, let's talk a bit about what you've learned and go over the things that you've learned. You've learned that you have two types of contrast without even knowing. You have contrast between light and dark, and you have contrast in between colors. So complimentary colors are very contrasting. You've learned about analogous colors. You've understood that analogous colors play well together. And you've also understood that you don't always want the colors to be very, very vibrant. And you don't have to wait for colors to dry if you know a bit of color harmony, or you understand what your colors do when they play with each other. So you can think of the painting just as a color palette. Notice how you can find the colors everywhere over there. It's going to look nicer if we turn it around. Okay? And you can create a lot of colors and variety of colors by moving slowly, and that gives you time for the other colors to dry. Notice how the yellow, is dry. Let's grab another finger. I don't have any clean fingers. So the yellow is now dry, and we've moved towards other colors. There is a bit of white over here. We've moved towards other colors that are opposite on the color wheel from the yellow. So now we could actually put some purple over the yellow with no problem because it's almost entirely dry. So this is color harmony in action. This is exactly what you can do. Once you understand what your colors can do together and how you can move slowly towards different colors. You've also really played with the palette knife and did some scraping and some brush, well, not brush marks, but beautiful shapes with the palette knife, and you've understood how to blend a bit with the brush. And also about transparencies, you've understood it by adding the water at the end. Now let's let this dry, and I'm going to show you in one, two, three, how it's going to look. So this is the before frame, and I'm going to have the after frame in the next few minutes when this dres completely. So notice how the colors are very transparent in these areas, the gray and also more integrated. Now it feels very nice and beautiful. And if we turn it around, it can look even more interesting. So you can just turn these abstract paintings. Well, it's not completely dry over here, so I have to be careful. So look at what a beautiful painting you did. Remember, those kinds of experiments just like this one, you can use on the beautiful cardboard or a cardboard That is with Canvas on top. You can buy these at the store. Thank you for being part of this community. And if you are gracious enough, please leave a review. It will really help other people understand that this course is for them as well.