Pop Art Painting: Inspired by Artist Wayne Thiebaud

1. Thiebaud Class Intro: Here's a question for you. Which 20th century American artist is most known for his paintings of cakes, pies, and other sweet treats. If you guessed, when TiVo, You are correct. Although TiVo painted many other subjects, including people and landscapes, it's his yummy sweet treats that come to mind when most people hear his name. This class based on when t goes Food paintings. One of my students favorite or classes when I was teaching middle school art. Hello and welcome to my Skillshare class. I'm sure me. I'm a retired elementary and middle school art teacher, now able to work full time from home as practicing artist. I usually refer to myself as a mixed media artist because I have yet to meet an art material that I can't find a way to use. I love acrylics. I have been dabbling lately with oils. I like watercolors and gouache. I like pen and ink drawing. And I've also done some work in photography, especially cyanotype printmaking, which is a form of photography. In any event, I tried to incorporate things in all my classes that appeal to beginners as well as more experienced artists, I firmly believe that no matter how much experience we have as artists, we can always learn something from one another or from the classes we take in the videos we watch. If you're meeting me for the first time, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And if I've taken classes from you or you have taken classes from me, I'm so glad we're back together again and welcome to you as well. Now let's get going on another artistic adventure. As you've worked through the lessons in this class, you'll learn how to use flexible modeling paste. Sometimes I refer to it as modeling medium to imitate when TiVo is luscious layers of creamy color. Without the all-consuming effort of oil paints, you'll be using some basic acrylic colors to do a little color mixing. This class is one of my teacher tested kid approved favorites from my middle school art classes. Once you learn these techniques, this is a project you can easily share with your own school age children or your own class at school as the school year begins. Although this class was designed with beginning artists in mind, it might inspire some more experienced artists to have some summertime fun do. We'll be painting a triple scoop ice cream cone. Process can be adapted easily for other yummy treats. Over the years, my middle-school students have painted cakes, pies, cookies, ice cream cones, and even pancakes with butter and syrup. You will need a few supplies to get started, especially if this is your first experience with acrylic on canvas. You'll find a PDF file for supplies with links to purchase them in the projects and resources section, along with the printable ice cream cone pattern, and a full color sheet with the instructions for mixing the paint colors used in this class. Join me in the next video to learn more about the supplies that we'll be using. 2. Supplies: Okay, here we go with supplies and it is quite an extensive list. But if you have other things on hand at home, feel free to use them. It doesn't make that much difference. I worked on what's called a gallery wrapped canvas. This one has a wood structure underneath, under here and here. This type of gallery wrapped canvas is really sturdy and strong so it can hold the weight and the liquid that's in the modeling paste that we'll use to build up the surface of the ice cream cone. This one is a little more expensive than this one right here. This is the same basic idea. It's a wood frame, but it's doesn't have that fancy finished look on the back. It's just stapled around the back. You'll find these at your craft supplies store. This artist's loft brand is Michael's. And it's also four by four by 12. If you don't have these and don't really care to buy anything, you can make use of things that you have on hand. Any size canvas that's at least I'd say at least 12 inches tall. If you're going to use my ice cream cone pattern that I provide. This is just another artist's loft product. It's a canvas panel. They do occasionally bend a little bit from the weight and the liquid in the modeling compound. But they do work. It's a good way to practice and they're very inexpensive. Another option is a piece of wood or wood panel. The only thing is when using wood, you will need to chess over the surface, which is a clear or white or black. Just so it's a surface prepared preparation for wood or forbear Canvas and fabric. Or if you don't have that on hand and don't want to spend the money on that. But you do have some wood around that you can use. Some white acrylic paint will do the job as well. So first thing first is, what are you going to paint on? The second thing is what are you going to pay with? I've chosen to paint with Liquitex basics, acrylics. The main reason I've chosen them is that they are easily obtained. The colors are pretty reliable for color mixing and they're not very expensive. And I'm gonna be restricting myself to the basics. The three primary colors, yellow, red, and blue. White, which is good for mixing pastels and lightening colors. And this is burnt umber, which is a really nice chocolate brown. Whatever paints you have on hand, acrylic, acrylic paints are best. If you have a pretty good supply of craft paints like this one here. You can use this as mint chip pearl might be just right for some mint chip ice cream. Whatever acrylic type paints that you have on hand will work for your paint. Brushes. I like to use I like to use angled brushes that are made for acrylics. They allow me to get good close edges and to get into little corners. I'll be using a variety of sizes. I have this larger one that's probably about three-quarters it a little over half an inch. I've got these slightly more than a quarter-inch ones and then a couple itty-bitty ones. So some somewhat stiff bristle brushes for using with acrylics. I don't recommend watercolor brushes because they tend to clump up with acrylic paints and become very frustrating. So paints, you will need some kind of paints like this. You will also need one thing that is a specialty product. It's called flexible modeling paste. The brand I happen to use is Liquitex. I'll have a link to that on the supply list. Other companies also make it. And what this is is a very paste like substance that's used to build up layers. And we're going to use that to create the ice cream. So I use a plastic spoon for damping. You can use a plastic knife for manipulating it on your canvas or board or a palette knife. Any of those would be good or anything like that for manipulating this onto your surface. That is the one specialty item that you really need to have to do this project. You'll also need to have a few other things. The basics, water jar, keep your brushes clean at all times. Paper towels or old rags. Sponge. I'm going to use a sponge, a wet sponge to create the background on mine. So that's also a good idea to have. Then you also need some surface for mixing your paints. I'm going to be using Palette, Palette paper pad. I like this because I can use it and use it for quite some time. And then when it's done and no longer can hold any more paint, I can tear it off and throw it away. Nothing goes down the drain and I like that. However, if you have a plastic palette, an old plastic plate, you can use paper plate. Whatever you have on hand, just something to mix your paints because we will be doing some paint mixing on this one. Then as far as little finishing touches, I'm going to use a little bit of glitter. Because why not? Little sparkle never hurts. Then there's an option. It depends on what you like to do. You can use some type of clear coating. This is Caroline acrylic coating. Or you can use a craft sealer by a lanes to spray yours after you're finished, give it a little bit more of a shine. Because once we mix these paints with a lot of white, they do tend to get more of a matte finish. So if you want to shine, you need something to shine them up. One more thing I want you to be aware of is I do offer a couple of handouts within this lesson, I have a pattern that you can print out on card stock for the ice cream cone so you can use that. It's about ten inches tall. I also included a printable little handy-dandy guide to how the colors are mixed. So I'll be demonstrating with a lot of these colors in my demonstration. And this will give you the directions for how to mix them if you're unfamiliar with mixing, I don't think I've forgotten anything, but if I do, I'll pick it up as we're going through the lesson. 3. Sponge Paint the Background: I'm using a wrapped canvas and my goal is going to be to make a peachy color. Now I could turn my canvas this way, but you won't see the whole thing as well. So I'm going to work sideways. This will be the bottom of my Canvas, and this will be the top. Going to use a palette knife. I have some yellow, some red, and a pretty good sized bit of white. It's a rather large bit of white. And I have a sponge that I've dampened in my little water bucket, so it's slightly damp. Going to put yellow first. The general rule when mixing paints is to go from light to dark. So I'm going to put my yellow in first. And good, Nice, nice pen. I make it a nice bright yellow. And remove some of that. And I'm gonna put a little bit of red in at a time because I don't want it to get too dark, too fast. I want to be able to control. I'm going to control how dark my orange cats. I'm going for a nice salmon peach. Kind of a rosy. This red gives you a really nice rosy peach tone that I really like. Yeah, that's a nice, a nice peach. I've got my pH. I think that's just about right. I might add touch more rigid, just a little tinge, more red into it. I'd rather have it a little bit darker at the bottom so that it will lighten up as it goes to the top. Right now I'm just simply going to scoop paint. This is the bottom because I'm going to go this way. And I'm just going to scoop some paint to the bottom. Excuse my palette knife. You can use a plastic knife, palette knife. Whatever you have on hand. A Christmas card for this too. If you have an old credit card. That's also another way to spread the paint. And I'm just gonna get all my paint onto here, most of it at the bottom. It's very rough looking right now. Demonstrate a little bit with this is an old credit card that I offer. It's really a thing. I don't want to waste any of it, so I'll pull some of it off and on here like so. Now I'm gonna take my dampened sponge and just grabbed just lightly, bring my pain up to the top of the Canvas, keeping most of the color, the bottom, letting it get a little bit more faded out to the top. And then I'm going to have some of it on my sponge and paint my sides way everything matches. There's no need to worry about A-frame. Look good. You can also use a contrasting color. But I kind of like having it just match. The next thing we're going to do is take some white. And I'm just going to put a little bit of white here on my palette. Keep my sponge painting. So it still has some paint. And it can turn this, That's my top part. I'm going to add more white to the top and bring it down into painting. My goal being to have the top lighter than the bottom part. Maybe go a little bit later in the tub. And I'm putting a fairly thick There we go. I like that a little bit wider. And that's gonna be the top. It gives the illusion of having a base. Although there really isn't one. It's just a single piece. Hard to pick up because I have the sides painted. But that's the top is lighter and the bottom part. So now if you want this to look smoother right now you can see a lot of brushy, brushy type lines. You can go back over it with your sponge. The side of the spine is it doesn't have any paint on it and smooth it out just a little bit. And now we'll let that dry. 4. Add Three Scoops of Modeling Paste: Okay, it's time to get things ready for prepping with your flexible modeling paste. First thing to do if you're using the pattern, go ahead and print it out, cut it out. And I'm just going to use a pencil to put it on my canvas. Since I have a light-colored background. Just like that. Then you might want to just detail out the edges. Anyway, you want little drippy, nice to have a little drippy ice cream on your cone. Line out where you want the layers, different scoops to be there, and a little area for your cherry on top. I don't do any lining here at this point. You can if you wanted to put that in, but for the most part, I just free hand that when I'm ready for that part of the painting. Once you have your pattern and you're going to want to apply your modeling paste. I'm going to use a spoon to get some of it out. And you want to start with your bottom layer because you're going to overlap your layers. Your plastic knife or your palette knife comes in handy here. Scoop some out, just spread it out slightly. You can spread it with your plastic knife or with a palette knife. What I like about the palette knife is that it has a little more flexibility. So you can get around curves. It tends to be a little smoother. I don't worry about staying in the lines, going out of the lines. I just want to spread that first layer on there. And it looks like I could use a little more right here. It started to get really thin. You can scoop some directly out of the container with your knife and go around having a little trouble getting this rounded out the way I'd like. You can turn your canvas as you work if that helps. Trying to keep it stabilize so that you can see what I'm doing a little bit better. If you're like me, you like a nice, nicely filled ice cream cone. I'm going to scoop out a little extra and use my palette knife to give it that nice bit of ice cream that you have when the scoop plopped down on your code. A little, maybe a little swirl. So that's my first layer. This is thinner up here because I am going to be overlapping. The next one. So once again, I'm going to dip some out places where I want it, swirl it around. Just to fill in that space. I kinda went out of my space right here a little bit. You can use a wet paper towel and pick that up. Or you can just say, hey, it's a generous scoop. And leave it right in place. Here. It's kinda like icing a cake. If you think of it that way you're icing cake or cookies. It's a very similar motion with your hands. Now I have this layer in place can smooth out. And I'm going to add that extra, extra bit generous serving here. This does take a while to dry, so if you're not happy with it, you can take some of it off. However it will leave white marks. So you've gotta be careful how you do it. I just let it go. It'll be what it'll be. So there's that. And then I have one more scoop. Make this a nice generous heaping. Help it. If you're a little unsure of the technique, you can practice on a piece of cardboard. But honestly, it's really, if you can ice a cake or ice some cookies, you can use modeling, modeling paste. Push some of it down here, smooth it out a little bit. Make it a little smoother. Swirl it. Go up here to where I'm going to put the cherry. You can see here I have a little more than I might have wanted. So I can go in there with my finger and just pull some of it off while it's still wet. And the cherry on top. That's the, probably the most challenging part of this, is getting that little round shape. Up there. I go in a little swirly round pattern. Just like this, just kinda swirl around until I get a nice little around swirl like that. There's my cherry on top. Now this is going to take now they're a little bit here that I don't want. You could also wet paper towel and get in there and clean those little bits of extra modeling paste out. This is going to take a while to dry depending on the temperature and the amount of moisture in the air, your humidity levels. It can take anywhere from 12 to 48 hours to dry, especially if you have thick areas like I do right here. I always let mine dry overnight and then I check it. If it's still feels a little too squishy and I know it's not quite ready to use. So this is going to sit awhile. Before I get out my paints. Again, a little, touch it right there, push that little, little bit in like that. Like that. Now these these tools should be cleaned off. I just wipe them off. I don't wash them. You don't want this stuff going down your drain high, just wipe them off and let whatever remains hard and now they're they're still usable. 5. Mixing Your Paint Colors: In this part of the class, I'm going to mix all of the possibilities, even though I may not use all of them when I actually start to paint, it just makes a lot more sense for me to do them all at the same time so that you can see how each one has been made, especially if you've not done this type of color mixing before. So I'm going to be using, I'm making basically seven different colors. This is my palette from the other day. This paint is dry. And actually because palette paper has a waxy finish, the larger lumps can actually be pulled off. So it's very usable. I'm going to put seven white splotches here, 1234567 for my seven colors that I'm going to make more, they're not the same amount. Then I'm also going to appear. But my brown, some blue. Whoops, that was a little much. Don't squeeze two, squeeze, do art. I'll basically that's way more than I'm going to need unless I was doing a blue background, in which case I would probably use quite a bit. And my red. The first color on the color chart is the peach, which I had already made when we were talking about the backgrounds. So that one is yellow. I'm going to load some yellow on the back here, mix it in to get a good peach. You want a nice bright yellow? I'll put a little more yellow in there. A nice bright yellow. I'm just going to use a paper towel to wipe off my palette knife. I'm not going to worry about washing it off at this point. A little dab of red. I started with white. I added yellow, which is the next darkest color. And then the last color that I'll add is the red. And I'll continue to add red until I get the peach color that I like. This one is a little bit more yellow than the background that I painted the beginning. So if I wanted to be a little closer to that, I'll add a little bit more red. And that'll give me a nice peach. I'll use my palette knife to, or your kitchen, you're a little plastic kitchen knife to scrape all that together. And now that's ready to use. And I would want to use this fairly quickly because it is a very small amount and it will dry quickly since it is acrylic. The next color that I have on the color chart is pink. It's just white with some red. Great for strawberry ice cream, cherry ice cream. Again, you can make it as deep a pink as you would like. Here I have just a fairly small amount of red going into that. It's a little bit lighter than the sample that I have there. If I wanted to go a little bit darker, tap a little more red on the bottom. And now I have a nice deep, nice deep, almost like a rose petal, kind of pink palette knife. The next thing I have is the mint, like a mint green, great for pistachio, or mint chocolate chip or mint flavored ice cream. White, Let's blue plus yellow. And I didn't write that correctly. I really should have had white plus yellow plus blue because we do want to go lighter to darker. So smack me on the hand for that one. And this one, I'm not going to make a real bright yellow or a dark yellow to get that right shade of green. Just going to tap a little bit of blue into it. I've got a nice light, minty green. If I wanted a darker green, I would just simply add a little more blue. But I kinda like that. Then I'll work. Good, put it tinge more in just a tiny little dribble. And get it a little bit, a little bit more towards an aqua or a turquoise. If I go too far with that, I can tap a little yellow and take it back. Now I have my main screen. I'm going to hold off for a minute on my browns. I'm gonna go right to the raspberry, which is white, blue, and red. Again, red or blue, they're kind of similar. So I have my white. I'll put a little red in it, so I've got a pink. And I want to go a little bit lavender with this kind of a nice raspberries. So it'll be a red, purple that leans towards red. Sometimes you'll hear people or if you look at your Crayola crayons, here, you see red, violet, and put a little bit of blue in that. One of the hardest colors to mix from your basic primaries is a good lavender. I often tell people if you really want a true lavender color that doesn't go a little bit towards gray, which is what this is doing a little bit, then you might want to just buy a nice lavender when you're buying your pains. Lavender color there. And I could go a little darker, a little blue into it. So red, blue, and white will give you a lavender. More blue, you'll have a lavender that leans towards blue. More read your lavender will be a little brighter, a little pinker. Nice. Lavender color. Light blue is very simple. White and blue. I can't think of too many ice creams. I guess there's some, but I like this as a background. If you didn't want to do the orangey color, this could make a really pretty background color. Blueberry, nice, blue and white. The next color, fields are browns. And I'm going to start with a light. My code needs to be a light brown. So it's gonna be white with my burnt umber, but I'm going to add a little bit of yellow, or sometimes you might prefer red. So I'm going to start with my yellow. Put a little yellow in there. And then I've pretty hefty amount of brown. Burnt umber is what we're actually using here. And that yellow shifts it just a little bit towards a warmer, just slightly golden brown. That might be a little too much. Put Lamar Brown in there for the base color on my ice cream cone. And if we don't really care for that, you can pull little bit away. Maybe test putting a little red in it. Really just a matter of preference, sometimes mixing. It's not an exact science. I'm liking the red in there. This kind of leans a little green, greenish and I sort of like that paler. More bad luck to that. Then if you're going for a light chocolate brown, you've got your brown white in it, or put it in some white. And you've got a very nice milk chocolate brown. I have a friend. I like, kind of like that for my, I might even like that for my cone. May take a little bit of that yellowy brown and put it in there. To do my ice cream cones, maybe just put a little of this. So it's not an exact science to mix your colors. There's some basic information that applies. After that. It's really a matter of what you like. So now I have my paints mixed and I'm ready to pay. 6. Painting Your Ice Cream Cone: One quick thought before I start painting, I had some white left because of the way I did my browns. You could create some lemon just by putting a little yellow in your white. I'm thinking of those nice sharp ydy kinds of colors. So you can also do a light yellow. So we have a lot of color options. The first thing we're painting, I'm going to paint will be the colon. And then I'll work with the colors. I'm going to use this fairly small angled brush. And I'm going to pick up my lightest tan color. I'm looking at it and thinking it's a little bit more grayed out then I like for an ice cream cone. So I'm gonna go back up here and pick up some of that more yellowy color that I had. Mix that in a bit more around here. And I'm going to let that dry before I tried to put any lines or shadows on it. Let's leave it in place. There was a little bit more yellow here to brighten up that side. They're just very Here we go. Give it a little more yellow. I'm going to clean my brush off in my water and my bit. Now I'm ready to start painting my layers. I'm going to go for a surety summary sort of look. And my bottom layer is going to be a minty green. When you're painting on this rough surface, it works best to kind of tap your paints in with your brush. It'll cover very easily because this is a white surface. So it's really easy to get good pink coverage. And the only thing you may have to do because it's a raised surface. Get underneath where you got this white in there. Try to for all the white spots as best as you can. I have my minty layer. Mentor pistachio. Both sounded really good right now. It's rather warm today. I'm going to switch those off and my water off. And I'm ready for my next layer, which I think is going to be a strawberry layer. One of my favorites. And you can see that once you've mixed your colors, this step goes very, very quickly. Now, my colors were all pre-mixed, and I have just small amounts. It's a little bit challenging to save your mixed colors. So you do want to use them up within a few minutes of mixing. Because the acrylics do dry so quickly. There we go. I have some mantra pistachio time to I think my top layer. I'd really like a chocolate. So I'm going to get my brown umber. And I'm just going to add it to this brown that I had for the ice cream cone. But some on their legs so and mix it in a little bit. So it lightens it slightly, but not as much as it would lighten it. If I had white, white would be a little too much. I'm mixing it in here, give myself a nice chocolate brown. And that's gonna be my top layer. My top scoop will be some chocolate. Now, right now, the chocolate looks so dark compared to everything else. But when I add the brown lines down here, you're gonna see that it really does blend nicely with my colors. This is the kind of tight in through here, so I'm gonna go with a smaller brush. I've got this little bitty brush too. But the brown on the raised edges. You can, and I recommend if you're working with children, especially 108 to 10-year-olds, maybe even a little bit older. It's sometimes a good idea to let each color of paint dry really well before you move on to the next one. So that if they get a little bit away from the space, they don't get too much color where it shouldn't be. There we go. The next thing I have, because this is still a little bit sticky. I'm sure. I'm going to do the cherry on top. I'm going to go back to the slightly larger brush and just read straight up bread. Because putting it on this white modeling paste is going to lighten it just a little bit anyway. I'm going to let that dry. Now those who lead dry before we do anything else. The next thing is going to be to add the detailing ice cream cone. For that, I do want to use a small brush and the chocolate brown color that I had mixed. So I've got this at all. Where your cone folds over itself. It's just a sketchy little line, not a real heavy line. And then the subtle crisscrossing lines, again, nothing heavy or thick. Just the suggestion of the texture on the cone. Now I will tell you if you're working with kids, they will tend to put pretty emphatic lines here and that's fine. Then I'm gonna go with my lighter, mix, a little bit of these together, a little bit of the light, a little bit of the dark, give it a little shading underneath here. And if it goes a little too dark, which it's doing right now, go back to your lighter color and lighten it up. I'm just adding little shadow areas in my cone. Excel. Now if you have an even thinner brush, if you have a very fine brush. Early in the supply list I showed you this teeny tiny little brush. You can get in there and get a little more precise. Now I'm going to let this dry, and I've got my cone is dry. My ice cream is in place. My cherries on top. I'm going to take a little bit of white, just a tiny little bit of white, and a tiny little bit of pink. To give myself just that little that little bit of. Which called reflection, I guess, where the light's hitting my cherry on top. If you want to, you can also give it a little stem. Just with your brush, just a little bit of your brush like that. Very, very, very tiny. You don't want to go too heavy on the stem. And the last thing would be, if you want to put glitter on your project, what you'll need is a little bit of glitter. Very little. You're going to apply it with your fingertips. And just whatever paint you have left here in each of your colors, make sure your brushes good and clean. Take some water. And that paint the green and just kinda wet it. Just in a kind of a random pattern. Then do the same with, I'm going to do the same. My pink, my brushes not its cleanest, so I'm just going to have to make it work. Make sure your brushes look cleaner than what I'm doing a little bit down here. And then I'm gonna do that with my browns and just tap the brown like that. Let me just put a little bit up here so it's a little bit wet in those spots. Not going to sprinkle this all over because I don't want it to stick to where I might have some wet paint. I'm just going to put a little bit on my hand and take it between my fingers and just sprinkle it in a few spots. Whew, that's way too much, that's going back in the container. This is totally optional. But I will tell you from having worked with children for years, they love glitter. Boys, girls, they all love glitter. Now this will have to go back in my container. I have it ready, I'm going to let it dry, brush off any loose glitter. And then as a last step, I will probably spray this with some of the aliens. Fixative and little gloss spray just because I like that. When you finish up this step, make sure that you get your brush is really clean. Mine are just sitting in water. I'm going to scrub them up really good with a little bit of soap. I like to use. You can use detergent or you can use hand soap that's designed for gardeners and for outdoor work. That is also a good way to do things. But makes sure you clean your brushes. Really important. As soon as this is dry enough, I'm going to use this aliens acrylic sealer with a gloss finish. I'll have to take it outside to do that. But before I do, I'm going to assign my work and I love these pens there, the zebra brush pens. I got them at Michaels Crafts. And they come in a really pretty gold. There's a silver. And this is the copper, which I thought would be perfect here. And I'm just going to send my work before I call it finished. 7. Project and Final Thoughts: Now that you've viewed the class, it's time for some project fund sharing projects is one of the best things about the Skillshare classes that I've taken and the ones that I have taught. No matter how much experience we may have, there's always something new to learn from the creativity of others. Show your project to the class project space. Add a few words to tell other students what worked well for u. Substitutions you have made using materials that you already had on hand and suggestions you have to make the project or the class better. The feedback you provide will help other students. And it will also help me improve the classes that I share on Skillshare. If you painted something other than an ice cream cone, we'd love to see it. If your own children, grandchildren, or classroom students created paintings and you can share them, please share those two. It's always fun to see how others interpret the projects. When you plan your project, think about colors that you like. Change up the background. Add a light layer of modeling medium to add texture to the background before applying your paint colors. Use the techniques learned in this class on your favorite subject matter. Modelling medium is used here to add dimension to the flowers. And white acrylic paint will brighten the cream color of the dried modeling paste. If you enjoyed this class and we'd like to try a similar pain along class based on a famous artists work. Check out pop art painting inspired by Warhol. In this class you'll learn how to use gouache or acrylic paint in the primary and secondary colors to create a six part painting in the style of Andy Warhol, one of America's best known artists of the 20th century. But for now, just print out the handouts, get out your supplies, and start working on your own delicious painting. If you need a little inspiration, be sure to click on the links for videos about Wayne TiVo and just amazing career. Above all. Thanks for taking the time to join my class today. I'll be looking forward to hearing from you and seeing your projects.