Shimmering Abstracts: Exploring Metallic Watercolors on Black Paper

1. Introduction: Hello everyone, I'm Denise Love. Are you ready to embark on an exciting artistic journey that combines the world of metallic watercolors with the captivating depths of black watercolor paper? In this class, we will dive into the world of abstract art, unleashing your creativity and revealing the stunning potential of these unique materials. Together, we will discover the incredible versatility of the black paper. Understanding how it's dark background can enhance the luminosity, and the brilliance of the metallic use. We will experiment with different metallic watercolors and pins, explore layering, and blending and mark-making techniques that will add depth and texture to your art work. By the end of this class, you will have gained a solid foundation in creating dynamic abstracts, on black watercolor paper with metallic watercolors. You will have the tools to express your unique artistic vision as you craft radiant compositions that shimmer and reflect with a captivating allure. I can't wait to see what you end up creating, so let's get started. 2. Class Project: For your class project, I want you to experiment and create some abstract paintings using metallic watercolors on black watercolor paper. This project will allow you to apply the techniques and concepts that you've learned throughout the course while expressing your own artistic style. Get ready to unleash your creativity and craft a radiant masterpiece that showcases the brilliance and reflective qualities of metallic watercolor. 3. Supplies: Let's take a look at the supplies that we'll be using in class. We're painting on black watercolor paper for this class. I'm using Stonehenge Aqua Coldpress in black. Fifteen sheets in this pad. It's 140 pound and it's 10 inch by 14 inch. This comes in smaller sizes. I like the bigger paper because I cut it up into other sizes, but pick whatever that you think you might enjoy using. I don't think that the black that I have found comes in the heavier weights. It seems like the 140 pound is the standard for black. It's not as many options. I like the Stonehenge because it's 100% cotton and I have decided that I just love working on the cotton papers. It gives you a little more work time with your watercolors and paints that you put on top of it. I like the way that it reacts to the paints. It's a very nice quality paper. I'm using this. There are several different brands out there. You can go with a student grade. I've got some black paper that came with my sketch box. It's by Van Gogh. It feels a little bit lighter with less texture. I'm sure it's just as nice, but it is a lighter-weight feeling. It just doesn't feel the same as this one. Just personal preference there. For the different projects that we're doing today, I do end up mixing other things on top. But I decided after we create a color swatch sample of all the things that we're doing and the pens and things that we have, then I could look at this and say, I love how these Stoneground ones work versus the Logitech versus, I think that's Logitech, Finetech. Logitech is electronics. The Finetech versus the Kuretake colors. I was really glad to have this as a reference sheet because now that these are like dry, I can see just how beautiful these are. Why can't you see something with the gold on gold, with all the shades of just the gold? That would be super cool. Then these are regular watercolors. I did test out, what's a metallic look like versus a regular. You can mix and match and change things out and try your different pencils and pens. I also tried out some oil pastels and different fun things. I've got some great stuff that we did today on black paper. I ended up really loving the fine tech pearlescent colors. I have six different colors that I could choose in my collection just because I have randomly gotten these in one of my art boxes that I get every month. I've always thought, what am I going to do with those? But I actually love these and I use them all. I also like the Stoneground Paint Company. Their metallics were absolutely gorgeous. I'm using this, which is another one that came in my art box, but you can look at their different options on the Stoneground Paint Company site. But they're beautiful. Then also showed you Gansai Tambi, which is the Kuretake ones I love so much. They have three different pearlescent sets that you could paint from. That's the set. This is the gold-on-gold set I thought was so pretty. Those also turned out exceptionally beautiful. This right here is the Finetech, these are the Stoneground, and these are the Kuretake ones. They all really nice here on the black paper. Then I also showed you a couple of options on metallic pins in class. I don't know that I actually used all of these or any of these, but we sampled them out and they are really beautiful on the sampler page of pen marks and stuff that I did. I have another stuff hidden from myself, but I have another sampler page where I was drawing and scribbling and just figuring stuff out early on. I really love both these sets that I got. This is the Staedtler brush pen set in metallics, and I also got an inexpensive Sunshilor metallic pen set. It comes with lots of colors than it. These are super fun. But when I got around to actually creating these gorgeous prints, my favorite was my gold ink, which is my Kuretake gold Mica ink. But you can use any gold ink or paint that you might be interested in. I also liked using black pen as dots and stuff. I love the little addition of some matte paint or the oil pastels. I love the way that looked. Then I had some metallic acrylic paint that I used through a stencil. While I have all these options that I mentioned in class, I ended up not using the metallic pens as much as I thought I would. I liked my regular gold and my gold that I turn to just because that's the way I create. I think I went back to, what can I do to make this beautiful for me? [LAUGHTER] Pull out the different options that you have. You might like one little set of metallic colors, a few metallic paints in your set. Then I used an acrylic metallic paint for my silver. That turned out absolutely beautiful here. On this piece you can see the silver dots shine really beautifully. You've got some good options there. Then I was painting on the landscapes. I was using my Winsor & Newton number 4 calligraphy brush, which I love. Then the other one I was using my Raphael zero SoftAqua mop, quill brush. I love that. Then some black favorite pens and my favorite gold and a couple of stencils. I like the StencilGirl stencils, I like the Crafter's Workshop stencils, and Tim Holtz Collection stencils. Some of these may or may not still be available, but those are some options that you can go look for. That's basically what I'm using in class to create the beautiful pieces that we create today. I'll see you in class. 4. Color Testing & Swatching: I thought we would start off by just giving this watercolor paper a test out. This is the Stonehenge, black 140 pound cold press watercolor paper that I'm testing. All this blackwater color paper seems to be 140 pound and I don't think I had found anything heavier. But it's a nice weight. What size is this? This is 10 inch by 14 inch. I like the bigger paper because then I have the opportunity to cut it in half and make smaller sizes out of it. While I plan to make abstracts that are with metallic colors, I thought we would give this a test and see what all the different metallics look like and what other ones we could maybe just test for a moment to see, do they even work? How do they look also? I've got lots of different things to test. I'm just [NOISE] spritzing them with water to activate them, just so that we have something ready to go pretty quickly. The metallic colors do seem to be a little harder than the regular watercolors. They do seem to take a little extra moment where it's getting ready. Over here, I've got Fine Tech colors. These are pearlescent colors. They are a really nice quality of metallic. I thought it would be fun just to swatch them out. Then as they dry, we'll know what we have. I've got several of the colors here that came in, I think, my monthly art box. That's why these are all in separate little containers. Look how pretty that one is. Oh my gosh. What I like about these on the black is that metallic does tend to shine really nicely. This is fine tech copper and golden rose, and then this one is crystal gold and this one is mint, and that one that was so vivid right there is blue silver, so that's appropriate, and dark teal. That's the six colors that I've just put on there. What you could do after you do this sheet is take a metallic pen or a white pen and write what these samples are. This could be your swatch sheet going forward. Also have some of these stone ground paints. They are three, I think, metallic colors that I thought that we could try. Look at that white. Because all of these colors that I have seem to be just a little bit different. They react different and they're going to look different. Look at that one. Definitely, the Stone ground Paint Company. This was another sample set that came in my monthly art box. Now I'm thinking, maybe I should take a look at getting some of these. Love those. These next ones that I'm going to color swatch are also pearlescent. I've got Gansai Tambi pearl colors, the gem colors, and the starry colors, because they're all pearlescent. I love these again, Gansai Tambi watercolors. They are very reasonably priced. I wouldn't say that they are super fine like maybe some other brands. They are not the super high fine, they're more of a medium grade, I would probably say. I could be wrong on that, but I feel like they're more of a medium grade paint, but the colors and they're a little different binder than regular watercolors. I'm just obsessed. I don't care if they are a medium or student grade paint. Look how pretty these pearlescent ones are. If you like it, use it. Whatever gets you excited about painting, go for it. See now these are the gem colors. Because the things that get you excited is what's going to get you to your table and painting. Look at that green. [LAUGHTER] Think of all these like that yellow one is a little bit color me. But other than that, these are pretty pretty. You can see how these are really standing out on this pretty black paper and given us lots of choices. These are the starry colors. I like how they've made each of these little boxes a different color because then it's easy to stick back in its sleeve without me thinking, what was this? [LAUGHTER] I do like all the shades of gold. While I'm not writing under each of these as I'm going, I'm filming it so I can always look back on this and write down what I did. [LAUGHTER] It's probably better if you write down as you go on what you did. But look at all those, those are amazing. It's going to be interesting to see how these dry. Now, just as a comparison, let's try a regular watercolor paint. Look at that. These are the Gansai Tambi Art Nouveau paints. It's very interesting. You can see the black come through it. Let's do this darker color. It is very obviously giving me plenty of pigment and color on top of their. Love that. What we could do now that I can see those work so well, what we could do is mix solids and pearlescence for different looks. You don't have to do all pearlescent. I find this just super interesting that that works so well. Those are good. I thought maybe we could get out a regular watercolor if you've got, say, some Daniel Smith colors or something like that, maybe we could try out some of those. This is Sennelier. I'm going to get a different color. Here we go. This is sennelier, but this is a Chinese orange. Always fun to just see what is a regular color going to do. Is it going to lead right into the black and not show up? But that one gave me quite a bit of color. Now, I do see something that's very interesting with those Kuretakes. I see him drawing and granulating quite significantly up there. Look at that, see all that granulation we've got going on with these colors that I just did I find that very interesting, that it's granulating and we can really see it where I can see it less obviously on the metallics, but I'm sure it's probably doing that. Let's just pick another color. This is a Daniel Smith serpentine, great, genuine, going to say green because the agreement serpentine genuine. Just going to grab a little bit of that color on the tip of my brush, and maybe a little more. Depending on how much water we've got there, some of these are going to just sink right down into the block. If you pick out a color palette that you think who I think I'm going to love these and give them a try out. That's how you're going to figure out what's going to work or not work. That's very interesting there. I also want to see what pens are going to be really good with these. I also have another black pad. This I got my sketch box, but it's the Van Gogh black watercolor paper. It's got a different feel than the Stonehenge. I can definitely tell that this Stonehenge is a super nice quality and then this just feels tiny bit less. Look at that. This is the Staedtler five metallic brush collection and all that was a pretty Rose, got the gold, got the silver. Got a white and we got a blue. I don't think that white was metallic, but it was very interesting. We know why it's going to work. Posca pen. Oh, yes, posca pen. Perfect. I've got some posca pens over here. Let's see if I've got any color down to the end. Oh, yes, here's a Posca pen. Oh yeah, look at that colored Posca pen. Really nice. I've got the white obviously because always have whiteout. Nice, so posca plus one for posca pens. Also, I love my gold ink, so I've got some gold ink over here. [NOISE] Let's just test some gold ink here. I'm going to definitely have the pretty coldness go and because I like the circles, I like little dots. That's going to be perfect on the gold. I also have this in silver. Could get that silver out. I'm positive that silver would look good also. Here's a speedball, silver, close enough. Here's the [inaudible] silver. [NOISE] Look at all these yummy colors. These are looking really good now that they're getting dry. I'm giving them some time to dry there. Yummy what the silver too. Now as those dry, we'll be able to see how much they sink down into that color there. Just wipe my pen off here. Then I also got a little cheap set, Sunshillor metallic pen set 12 colors. What I liked about this was the color range and just for fun, abstract drawing. There might be a moment when you're like whew, I need a green or oh yeah, see, these are nice. Here's a different green. Oh, that's more like a blue-green that's so pretty. Then a blue, so definitely a plus on this little tiny metallic pen set, you could also try some of those Jelly Roll pens. Those might work out goods so that's a plus. What about a watercolor pencil or some of your favorite pencils? Let's just try a watercolor pencil because I got some out here. Now see, those actually are super nice. Let's put some water on it and see what it does. Pushes it back down into the black paper. What I'm thinking there, that pushes it way back down. What I'm thinking there is, it could be your mark-making, maybe some lines and stuff. Maybe you've got the ink tints or some of your pencils like that. Pencils definitely, yes. But when you add water, they definitely push back into the black so that's interesting to know. Now I want you to color swatch, sample anything that you happen to have got with the black and just see what does it look like on there? Did you like it? Did you not like it? Is it going to be part of your projects today and just see how did these turnout look, how pretty these are. Now, I've got a plethora of mark-making things. I can use solid or metallic in the watercolor and get some interesting effects. Then what I want to do is put the watercolor down and draw on top of it. Mixed media always like to create. But I definitely I'm going to add that we swatch things out as we get started. These are really pretty, those are Logitech ones and those are the stone ground ones. These are beautiful. I actually want all of these stone ground ones, that's so pretty. Then these are super pretty and some of them granulate a little bit more like I can see the black really coming through on this one here more so than I can on some of the others. But I like the way that these look when it dries. I just like the look, these are more glittery. That's very interesting. I think that's why I like the difference. These are more glittery. These are more pearlescent. I love that. What a great collection of yummy ones that we can play with. I want you to sample everything out, see how it looks on the black, how it's going to dry out because these are getting drier. I can see more of the black coming through, which might be the look that you're going through or it might not be. So very interesting to know this going into creating. I'll see you in the next video. 5. White Paper VS Black Paper: I thought it would be fun for us to do a test of the same metallic colors on white paper versus black paper. This is just a piece of that Stonehenge paper that I've cut down to the same size as a piece of some 140-pound Hahnemuhle white paper. I like to use that, it's cotton paper, so both of these are cotton papers and we'll get some good results hopefully. We'll be able to see what's the difference in putting the metallic on the white versus putting the metallic on the black and I thought it would be really fun to maybe do gold on gold abstract so I'm using the Gansai Tambi starry colors that I've got over here and I've just put a little bit of water in each of these to activate them. They seem to be a little harder than regular watercolors the metallics do, so they really do work better if you go ahead and spritz some water in here. What I like about the shades of gold, is there are so many shades there that I think we can get a really pretty abstract set. I just thought I'm just going to go up the line and just make a pretty little abstract like we do on one of our other projects in class and I'm not worried about composition and stuff at this point. I'm more concerned about testing out the differences. But usually, when I like to do color tests and sampler tests and stuff like that, I like to do it as a little sampler painting because then I can see real-world application basically and I can see, do I like it, did the colors mix, I'm I going to enjoy creating with this, is it going to make something that I'm going to like rather than just a color splotch like we did? I did a sample swatch where we made the samples but that's not really exciting. It doesn't show you how all the colors are going to react with each other and this way I can see like, what am I getting, how do they react, do I like these paints, do they mix with each other? I like creating fun samplers and I can already tell you such a big difference here, just from the white to the black, you almost can't even see some of these colors on the white, whereas on the black they were like, wow, but on the black, you do see the black shining through it, so the color shifts, so the color stays more true on the white. But on the black it really is dynamic. Look at that color, the way that's working with that black shining through. That's very interesting experiment and really will get you to see like do I like the black? Do I like the way it reacts with the color and what it's doing? I'm just working my way up the line. The darker these gold get, the more I can finally see them on my white. The color changes slightly here on the black paper. But man, this is looking pretty good. Stuck that in the wrong one. Let's get that dark one. Here we go. I like that, red gold on that paper there. So interesting. I'm just pushing it around, not worrying too much about what I got going on. I'm just trying to see how does this work? How am I going to like this? Is it going to dip into other things, does it granulate, do I like what it's doing? It's looking pretty cool on the white too. [BACKGROUND] Definitely, an argument to play in the metallics on white and black. What do you think? [LAUGHTER] I like that where I've got some extra little lines there, that's cool. You can really see all the differences in these golds on the black. On here, it just looks like maybe varying shades of yellow, but on here, it's actually looking like it's going from silver to a medium goal to a red gold. I can actually see what these differences are. That's pretty cool. [NOISE] There we have 1,2,3,4,5,6 of these shimmery colors. These are fun to work with. It definitely helped that I wet all the colors first. But check this out. We're going to have to let this dry and then we can come back and compare the two and see like on this light one, can we even see this lightest pearl color? I don't know, but I do love this one. But this is so vivid and beautiful too. I'm going to let these dry and I'll be right back. These are dry. Look how vibrant that is. It looks like I have painted with metal on this black paper. That's crazy how shimmery and metallic that looks on the white paper. It's a whole lot more subtle. It's very beautiful in its own way, but you don't get the feeling that we actually painted with metal. I see bits and parts in here that shimmer and shine, which I'd really love to see in some of my abstracts moving forward. I'll definitely be pulling some of these colors out and maybe incorporating them. But it's nothing like the metallic sheen that we're getting on, the black, the depth, and color that show up and it looks like real metal that we've painted with, is just amazing. Then you can save these as examples or you could go ahead and play with some of your metallic pins and just see what would it look like if I drew in this, I'd put dots or put texture into our little samplers. I like turning the little samplers into pieces of art and it's the perfect way to play and test out what you plan to draw, and make marks with because it's not like a piece that was important. It was a piece that you were playing with and so this is just a little gold pen, but look what the extra little dots do in there. I love that extra little detail. Now we can add in fun details to our pieces as we go and just to see, what does that look like on the white versus the black? I feel like on the white, it looks a little more ordinary. Just like any other mark-making that I would do. It just looks ordinary. But this is still such a pretty piece that I definitely love it. [LAUGHTER] But this is like, wowza. [LAUGHTER] What I want to do with some of these now is to maybe make some little samplers of the different colors and just see what we've got going on there. So I'll see you in the next video. 6. Small Color Samplers: In this video, let's make some little samplers. I want to do this to test out color and decide on a color palette, we can test out marks with our different mark making tools and just see what is going to work for us. I've just taken a big piece of that Stonehenge paper and just cut it into thirds and then cut that in half this way to get little pieces, and that gave me a little piece left over because I wanted these to all be the same size. These are about four and a quarter inches wide by five inches the other way. That left me with the bottom one inch strip left over that I can use as my little tester. I already have my color swatch that I did. I can look at this and think, well, what would this look like if I combined this color with this color with this color. I can pick colors based on this, and I like being able to see the differences and how much black shows through like on these pretty Stone Ground colors, they're a little more solid, whereas these Fine Tech colors, they're a little more glittery and granulated, and the Cure Turkey colors, they're a little bit in-between that they're like a little mix there and they're very shiny. All of them are very shiny. I really love these Stone Ground colors, I feel like I need to go visit their site and see what else they've got. I've only got these three samplers that came in our box. Then the regular colors I can see just sink down into the black paper. That might be interesting if I'm looking for a certain effect, if I wanted to do say some of this with the glittery blue and just see how that would finish out for a piece of art. But I think for this particular exercise, I'm going to stick with the shiny ones on the black because that's when I'm playing in currently. We can just see what are these going to look like as I use them. If I've got these pretty Stone Ground colors, I've already put some water on these to just activate them. Let's just see if we put some of these colors down, what we could end up with for a pretty little sampler. Then this will help us get to our larger projects where we're picking colors and deciding on mark making tools, then we can decide, what do we want to use in this project? I'm loving that. I've also got the golds, and I know we did the whole little gold project right before this. I might look at some of these other colors and just say, what do I think I want to mix? I also got the Fine Tech colors up here at the top. I've put some water on those, let's just see maybe if we do something with these blues, be careful with anything that's on your fingers, it will show up on this black paper. [LAUGHTER] Fill in that green, maybe this blue, and I'm just going to let these then have a little bit dry time, with maybe this gold. Then we can come back and practice with some mark making and just see what do we end up with? I like that. Let me put a little bit of this lighter color right there. Look at that. It'd be interesting because I'm working right up next to each other, do these blend together? Do they sit separate? These are blending a little bit. These are sitting separate. They're not really bleeding into each other like a regular watercolor. That's also very interesting to see what it does while it's drying. Let's try. I really love this color right here. Let's try this color right here. Look at that color. Maybe I can mix that with some of these golds. We don't have to stay in the same paint palette. These are drawing out a little bit when I pull them my water on these. [NOISE] Then what if I did even this darker shade of gold there in that set we just got, we'll just do this a little bit of like gold. Look at that. That's pretty [NOISE] That one's got a future. What if, maybe if we try, let's do like this green, and then maybe we can do blue and green. See now that's very vivid there. Look at that. What else do we want to do? Maybe let's try this blue from the Logitech. Let's mix some brands. Just depending on what you have, just play and figure out what do I have, what might it do? Maybe if I do some mark making in that color, how would that do? [LAUGHTER] Now that we got that started, let's just do a little mark making in there. That's pretty cool. I do like that a little bit right there. If you like it enough, you could come back to one of these others and say, what if I did a little mark making right up here, like what if I took this gold, will do that? Saying this is cotton paper so look at that. This is staying wet a lot longer, and this is the time to play and practice. Look how super granulated this is getting as it dries, and then it completely dries, so you don't see that separation as much on the color samples because it looks like it's drying at different layers there. But that's interesting to observe that. Let's go with these little pretty coppery colors and see what we can get. You know what, maybe we'll mix this copper with this Stone Ground red one over here. Look at that. That's pretty yummy. Look at that. We could, let's see which one we want to do. Somebody told me on one of my videos, they like seeing the colors in the frame which I always try to put the colors in the frame so you can see what I'm doing. But they like to try to guess, let's go with this gold. They like to try to guess what it was I was going to pick. Oh, look at that now that did bleed right into there, which I didn't expect because it's not doing it so much on some of these others, but check that out. That made a really pretty not touch that anymore like it. They like to try to guess what I was going to pick. I thought like a little game. [LAUGHTER] Let's see. So these colors here are crazy, but you know what? Let's just try it. Let's just see what these give us. I'm not a yellow person at all, but you know what, just for samplers, I want you to do 100 of these. I want you to do as many of these as it takes for you to be able to observe color palettes and figure out what is it that you like. Let's come back with this pearl. To get you to what we're going to be doing in our larger projects, I want you to have a whole lot of little sampler pieces like this so that we can figure out what the colors do? Which ones do we like? I don't want you to get to the big project and then be like, let's start discovery now. I want you to discover it at this stage. Try very hard to remember what you did in each of your pieces so you can be, I love this and maybe flip it over and write you did on that so that you could do it again. I know you might not have the collection of metallics that I've managed to gather over the years, that I really have gathered these over many years, like these Finetec ones came in different art boxes and they went into the drawer because I was like, I love matte gold better. [LAUGHTER] The stone ground one came and I'm like, how pretty are those, then they went into the watercolor drawer and then I didn't pull them back out until this class. Now I'm like, why did I do that? These are amazing. So try, just pull out whatever you've got. You don't have to have 15 different kinds, and play and experiment and drop color into these and see how they blend, and if they bloom out like this one, they bloomed out. That was pretty. That was these colors here. Well, it was that one and that one, but that gold went in there and then just started going right out and doing fun stuff. [LAUGHTER] I know I love this one, I know I love this one. Holding out judgment on some of these others. I'm not having high hopes for this one at all. This one I'm like, it's too much blue and green. Maybe it needs some gold or something in there. But this is fun. This is how you discover like, what do I love? Then when you get more of what you love, you could actually do more of that. Then mark make on them and then be, here are the marks that I love and the things that I want to make. Let me let these dry and then I'll be back. These have dried and just in case you're wondering which ones of these are my favorite, I ended up really loving out of this set the ones where I use the Finetec colors, pearlescent colors and the stone ground colors. These two, I used the Finetec and the stone ground. These I used the Kuretake ones. While they're beautiful and super metallic and they look like I've painted with metal, like this one right here, you can't tell that I used a yellow and a green. It just went into a whole big silvery blob. This one is real pretty, but it's again, real subtle and I can't see the differences as much. I do like this one though. The blue and the green seems to have retained the color more. The blue and the gold, and light blue has retained a lot of color. I do think though, these two to me, really look the most interesting. They have the pretty shine, they've retained all that lovely color in there. Or maybe it's the colors that I like out of these two versus the others. Because I believe this one used some Finetec color, which is probably why I'm still seeing the vividness of the blue. If you don't have any metallics at all, that's maybe the ones that I would look at first before the Kuretake ones. These are going to be really pretty worked into pieces like we did on the white paper. Seeing the pretty shimmer, because they do have that pretty shimmer. I think that's going to be the pieces, the colors that I save for abstracts that I do like this with other colors and maybe gold worked in. But as far as what looked best as little abstracts here, I like these better on that paper. Super important lesson here, because now I can see these three are a little more, I don't know, they're just not doing it for me. That might be the look you're going for. It's not the look I'm going for. This one was pretty vivid. I do like this one, but I love these even more so now we can look at this and think, does that even need anything else? Because it's amazing. What would we add to that? I've got metallic pens and I've got different things here that we could play in. I've got these little metallic brush pens that I think are really pretty. We can come back in now and do lines or dots, decorations. I've also got my gold ink. That would be a really good addition. Because with this one, this is the time to mark-making play. But some of these are so pretty, they are little pieces of art in themselves. With this one, let's just do a little bit of gold. This my gold mica paste. It's the one that I love to use the most. You definitely don't have to do anything with the gold ink if you don't want. But I just want to see because I plan on using the gold ink in my future art pieces so I want to know what is the gold ink going to do and look like on this black paper in a little abstract that I'm creating. How is it going to work for me? This is the time to figure that out. These are the little experiments that you want to try and be like that worked out or that did not work out. I want you to know before you get started that if your piece is going to end up looking like this because of those colors you picked. I want you to know this beforehand. I want you to not discover that when you're almost done with the piece and you're like, no, not what I was thinking. [LAUGHTER] Fun. Personally I like dots. I like thin lines with little dots on it. I like extra little dots going out, and yes, I'm doing the gold on the gold, but I think because it's different materials, you're still going to be able to see it hopefully just lightly, as an extra little perk as you get closer. I love that. We come in here, look what we could do, check this out. Let's check this out, go with me here. Hang on. Let me wash out my nib. I don't want that gold ink to stick in my favorite little dip pen. What if we did black? I'm just picking a black pen that I've got up here. You can use those Finetec pens. I've got little Kuretake pen. What if we came back with some black dots or lines or marks? We could very easily add some black decoration and then it will almost look like that black paper was coming through in different sections. I like it. Look how pretty that is. It's like the little black just came through the metallic and just added to that look. I love that. I can even come back up here and add a little bit of black just so that it wasn't all in one place if I wanted to. Do I want to do that? I can come back with some black dots. I think I like black dots. Look at that. Just enough. Not too much. I don't know if you can see this, but as I'm looking up in the little camera thing so I can see what I'm showing you, it's almost like there's a face and some white hair coming off that head. [LAUGHTER] Do you see that? [LAUGHTER] Now I'm never going to unsee that. [LAUGHTER] That one's pretty though, I like that. Now I'm feeling like some decoration here on this one. We could just come through and do some different stuff if we want, we can come a little stitching around the edge, pick a color to do the stitching look how fun that is like a little stitch at the edge, I like that. That's fun. We could do that more than one place. I like to do it in more than one spot so it's not hanging out there by itself unless I didn't like it then [LAUGHTER] I was watching what you're going to get. Sees like a little part of a butterfly wing right there almost, and I think I love the gold. We could do golden something different though, like I've got this gold pen. This is the time to experiment but I almost love this so much. Do I want to do it in something different or do I want to try the same old? This is the moment to experiment. If you're scared, because I'm scared, do it when you don't like [LAUGHTER] and see what would that do? See, I don't know if that's vivid enough, that's not as vivid as the vivid one that I love. Is it vivid enough? Would it do what I want it to do? I don't think it will. Definitely I have one or two that maybe you don't love and then you can experiment like this on it because you can do different pens, let's see what this pen does. See now, that pen almost disappeared in there. These are good lessons. What about silver? Now, the silver is really vivid but I don't think I want to use silver on this one. Maybe I want to use silver on this one. [NOISE] That's pretty. Then I can come back in, add some little dots. I don't know if I love that one but it's fine. Maybe we can do some lines through it. It gets easier once you decide that maybe the piece is not a keeper. [LAUGHTER] Then you're like, oh what? Let's just get bold now because it's not the important one. Then you start getting brave because this one I'm like, oh, it's a keeper. Before I jump into all the things, maybe I want to solidify some of my techniques first, here's a pretty gray. Whatever your most favorite sampler is, set that to the side and when you really got your techniques down and you're like this is it, then pull the favorite ones out and finish those as little pieces of art. Look at that. You might surprise yourself, and in the bold decisions that you make with the pieces that you're like, this is not a keeper, you might think, oh wow, I just turned into a keeper look how cool that worked. You might turn your less favorite ones into your most favorite because then you got bold and brave instead of being afraid to ruin it. This is what I love about stuff like this. We discover stuff that we're like, oh, that worked out and I didn't even think it would. Like this one is turning out better the more I add to it. It's pretty green here, we could come back in. Now I'm trying different marks and techniques and playing with different shapes just to see, do we like it? Is it a shape or a mark? Let's do circles that we might want to use on a piece going forward. You might discover interesting marks that you're like, oh, let's start using this one in our art. Look at that. Super fun. Look at all the fun little marks now that we've got on that one. This is the most exciting for fun wise. These two are the most yummy for keepers for art. I'm going to go ahead and do my favorite. I didn't discover something new there, which is fine. That's why I do these things. But it did help me solidify that yes, I want to do this gold on here and I like circles that's my own thing. You're welcomed to whatever your thing is. This is how you discover some of those do to that, whatever your thing is. Look at that. That's a pretty stuff. I love that. Two of these I love. This gives me an idea for another project. Thinking in my mind that it's going to lead me to somewhere new in a project. But check it out, so we've got two that are art in my opinion. One that is art with fun marks and playing and exploring. A couple of these that for the moment I'm not going to color and put stuff on, but we can finish them out because you can see how much more different they are when you've got pretty marks on top, because some of the fun of abstract is the layers that we're creating. I'm so loving this whole set right here so I feel like we need to do something with this pretty pink and gold feel there. Then these are fun just as the exercise of figuring out colors and adding marks and just seeing what do these do? This is my junk piece to test stuff on. Pick one that's going to be your junk piece to test, pick one that's going to have all your fun marks and things that you love, and then pick one or two that could be little pieces of art that you're like, oh yeah, these are beautiful. I hope you have fun with the little tiny samplers for color testing and mark-making and figuring out where do you want to go with your bigger pieces. I'll see you back in class. 7. Shimmering Abstract Set: For this first project, I thought it might be fine just to do some random abstract things that I like to do. Just something that you enjoy. Thought maybe let's start with this little Stonehenge set, because from that sampler set, which we can pull that back out, they're almost dry. I really liked these three colors, and then I might then pick out one of the other colors that I really loved. Like I love these three up here. I love these couple colors. Let's start with those three because I think they're my very favorite out of here. Then we'll go from there. I'm thinking like I'm going to do these a little bit random, like I do a lot of my abstract work and just create in the same way I generally like to create. We'll just see what we get. It's all about experimenting and learning and just figuring it out and see do we get anything we like or not. I'm not worried about the outcome at this point because I start all my art out with the thought that I can cut this up [LAUGHTER]. I can cut this up and make it into lovely collage pieces, I can make it into some junk art, stripe collages, so it takes the pressure off in my mind. If I'm already thinking, not a big deal, I'm getting my water out so it's a little bit closer. I'm already thinking not a big deal, I can cut this up. It like releases some of that pressure in my mind that maybe we normally are giving ourselves and it gets me past white page paralysis. It starts me down the path of creating a freeing way that I didn't really do when I was younger. Let's go with this larger tech. What was this? This is golden rows because I liked the difference in that color versus these. Look how pretty this is already. Oh my gosh, look at that, still a big thing of this over here. Let's get a little more of that, and I did have all these down. These are still down from our sample sheet that we just created. I did let it go ahead without water soak in and let it be getting a little softer if you just go with these dry and you don't activate that paint any. I don't know. It's real hard to get that metallic out of there. They seem to be a little tiny bit harder than regular watercolor. We haven't got very far yet, and I'm already love in these. Good choices. We're going to have let this dry. I'm going to let this dry and we can mark-make on top of it and just see what we get. I'll be right back. Our pieces are dry and now I'm excited to do some creating. I am feeling like I want to do one of my favorite things, [NOISE] which is some gold details. I'm going to use my Kuretake gold mica ink because I love the way it looks. All these pieces, I feel like this will work out really nicely. I'm just going to now mark-making doodle and fill in and finish off in ways that I think are going to make these pieces complete. So that could be dots. You could refer back to some of your favorite mark-making techniques, you could do some dots, you could do some lines, you could do all interesting mark-making on top. This could be finished for you at this point. You might like, I love that, but I do like making some lines and dots and things on top of this, and so that's exactly what I'm going to do. I've just got my Kakimori brass dip pen because it lets me do my circles. I'm just going to see like what can I fill in now. Feeling like maybe some dots. We'll just go with the flow. You can mark-make on top of watercolor with just about any supplies that you own we could do. Of course, I'm working opposite the way I should be going. I should be going this way and I'm going this way, but that's okay. You could do pastels, oil pastels, you could do pencils, you could do posca. I mean, just get creative here with your mark-making on top and finish off your piece in a way that just delights you. I really love that, definitely think that these are shaping up to be super beautiful. What if we take our favorite like a black pen and do some black areas just as something interesting to say, maybe the black is shining up in here. We need to get creative with some of this. Just think like, what could I do here that's different than what I normally do. I'm using a paper I don't normally use. How could I make that interesting? Opposite of what I might normally do, it's when you do stuff like this, you're like, wow, look what I just discovered. Check out that black line, I love that. Good one. Be real careful not to put your hand down on something that you're working on. I do have my very favorite five-gallon paint bucket stir stick lets you get from the paint store. I lifted up on one side and then I have a spot to put my hand down because man, you see how I work the wrong direction. I don't know why I do that, but this is what can save your pieces. Look how pretty that is, love that. Oh my goodness, these are getting like super exciting. Good ones. This is a good paint day [LAUGHTER]. I love how that black just looks like it's shining up through that metallic. Oh, nice. You're going to, whatever your abstracts, whatever you're thinking you might want to color here. You might want thoughts, you might want different line work, it's all up to what feels good when you're painting. Oh, look at that, so pretty. Oh, yeah. I like putting things in more than one place. If I've got lines in one place, maybe think of two or three other spots that could go. That way it's not like a single element it's being pulled together throughout the piece. Then you don't have to do all of one color with this pattern. You can split these up, like if you see in here, there's like some natural divides we can come through and just put a pattern or a mark in part of that emphasizing different parts of it. Like now that I've said that, I'm almost thinking like what if we have some just very pretty subtle black dots coming through right here which would be completely opposite of the gold dots that we did right under that. On your sample pieces where you're testing colors and stuff, you might make yourself some test sheets with color and different marks as ideas. I like dots, I like circles, I like stencil work. Oh, stencils. We could do some gold stenciling on top of something like this. That can always be fun. Get creative with this abstracts just because we're working on black paper and we have a different dynamic than what we normally would see with white paper, don't let that scare you. This are looking pretty beautiful right now. You're going to get to a point where you're like, doesn't need anything else? Do I like it just like it is? What else do I want to do to it? If you're like, I don't know and I don't want to ruin it, feel free to stop right there. Set it to the side, live with it, think about it and then two years from now you might be like, oh, this is what that need. If you get to that point, come back and add to it at that point. I'm almost thinking that we could perhaps do a tiny bit of stencil work on here. I like Punchinella which is a circle stencil and I could add a little punchinella in here. I also likes a few other stencils that I've got that are just fun mark-making. Just to add some excitement. Let me go grab some. I like to get stencils from the Crafters Workshop, StencilGirl and Tim Holtz, Stanford's anonymous collection. I like getting different stencils from these companies. These may or may not still be available. This is the halftone circle, it's one of my favorite. This one is the crafters workshop and it don't have a name on it, but it does say TCW456S and this really fun one too, I love it also StencilGirl Products and it's corrugated lines. I think that's really beautiful. Now I'm thinking, what could I add that'll give me one extra element of dimension. I'm feeling like they use little lines which you could mimic. If you have, say like an old gift card or an old credit card, you can mimic these lines by putting paint on the edge and doing that, so that could be one option. That's very exciting actually. Or we can put something on top of this and I'm feeling like maybe just some gold. I'm going to use my favorite gold paste, which is hard to come by. Pick whatever your favorites are. This is my Kuretake gold mica paste and the ink is pretty easy to find and sometimes the paste is hard to find. Pick out your favorite gold acrylic paint to do something like this with. But basically, I just come back in and add some details. I don't stick strictly with the stencil the way it's created, I don't just do a great big square. I like to come through and organically put some lines and stuff and then just see. Look how pretty that is? Probably, the final element that I needed. Let's come and do a little bit of that right down here in this pink and I think that will be the finishing touch I was looking for. [LAUGHTER Oh, my goodness. So pretty I wanted to come all the way down here. Let's just get this last little corner here. I want this too. See now I definitely think that is a final feel. I actually want some of this over here in this blue. You can mix your stencils too. You can lay it on top of this again. I didn't get down in there very far. Let's pour some more paint out. I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of my favorite little paint because it's hard to get [LAUGHTER] and I show it to everybody, so then they go buy it before I get it all. Let's see. Oh, see that right there. That is gorgeous. We could do them as a pair. Whatever we did over here, we could do over there. That might be one way to do it. Or we could do something a little different over here and see which do we like better? I'm feeling like for the sake of learning. This is so gorgeous. We could do a different color, we don't have to do a metallic. We could pull out some paint and do it, but I'm feeling like the gold were all into the bling, bling here on our project today. Let's just ride the bling wave. [LAUGHTER] Let's see here. Look at that. Let's come down a little further right here, so pretty. Let's just take it right down right there. See, look at that. Totally finished this for me. Holy cow, totally did it. Let's just peel the tape and see what we ended up with. This is just the big piece of paper that I cut in half. That's why I've got them, two of them here. Now I've never peeled tape off the black. If I peel this off and it looks like it's going to tear my paper, I could take my heat gun, keep the tape as I go and that'll keep my paper nice and fresh. I think I might do that. [NOISE] Just to show you how nice that looks, as I started to pull, you could see right here on this side, it was starting to pull the paper and I could see it. But as I ran the heat gun down, you can see we did not pull the paper off with the rest of that. If you start to pull the tape and you see it pulling parts of your paper, just heat that tape up as you go along, as you're pulling that off and that will save your piece because there's nothing worse than getting like the most amazing piece of art out of this and at the very end, totally ruining it by tearing your paper. Trust me, I've been there. I think I'm going to do that. I'm going to pull the tape. There we go. You see I just put the heat gun right where I was about to pull the tape and the heat gun is hot, you got to be careful not to burn your fingers. But look at how beautiful these are. These are gorgeous and now we can look in other directions like do we like it better this way? I do. Now that I'm looking at it because I've got the circles here and then the circles have the lines coming from it like they're going down. Look at that. Let's look at this one. Do we like it? Which way do we like it? Oh, that's nice there too. Feeling like that is it. I hope you enjoy doing a random abstract with some mark-making. Get creative with your marks and your paints that you pull. You don't have to have the colors that I've been working with. I just want you to get creative on some black paper and just start thinking outside the box and thinking, what can I create on a different substrate that I would never normally pick. I'll see you in the next project. 8. Shimmering Abstracts Planets: In this video, let's do something a little different and fun and let's maybe do something that could be like the planets and outer space [LAUGHTER] I'm thinking loose interesting circles that could be like planets and I just want to get it started just using my Raphael number 0 soft Aqua quill brush and I really liked in our samplers this color way that we had here and I may add even this pearly color here. I've got these three fine tech colors and the three stone ground colors, I don't know exactly what these colors are beyond golden, this pretty rusty color and this pretty purple color. This is copper fine tech, crystal gold and golden rose. I've already just wet them down so they've started to get activated and I'm going to just do some not perfect circlely planet look in pieces out here and then the rest of this can be outer space so I'm feeling we could do is then we could add in stars and marks and different fun things to add to what we've created. I'm going to just get this started and I'm thinking dip other colors in it and let them run and do their thing and then when they're dry, we'll just see what did we end up with. Then once you've got a couple of plenty shapes out there, you could always come back in here and add some further back. We could add some stars. We could just do some interesting formations, little larger pieces out here if we wanted and then after these dry, we could come back in with our ink and pins and do more. Super fun. I'm actually going to let this dry for a bit and then I can come back and add stuff on top and just see what do we get. I'll be back. Before this gets completely dry, I'm just sitting here looking at it, I think what I want to do is put a little bit of gold paint on the tip of my brush and do some pretty little splatter so that it really is like outer space and stars and stuff rather than just the big clumps that I created and I think that would really add to the interests of our piece, because now it really does look like outer space. Fun. I'll be back. These are mostly dry. There's one place that's still wet but I don't want to stop it up with anything because I don't want to have a divot there of color or a spot where it looked like I wipe something off because it's black paper so try to resist, soften things up if you can. I think because I loved on our sampler piece, the gold circles, I'm going to pick gold circles on this and gold stars because I liked it. I'm just using my dip pen, this the kakimori brass nib dip pen and I love it because it lets me do circles with my gold dip ink. That's fun. See now just did that. What if I were here, I did this. [NOISE] I love this. It is so pretty. [NOISE] If we're thinking outer space, we can pretend this is different moons around it and this is little rings around it [LAUGHTER] could just pretend all fun little stuff. Then in the little rings we've got stars, fits right into my liking to put little dots or pearls here on my gold lines. Just makes it even more lovely. To keep my hand off of parts that are wet, I'm going to use my paint stick. This is a paint stir stick like for a five-gallon bucket from the paint store and it's just I don't know. It's like two feet long. It's a good size. Then I can hold it up with one hand and lean my other hand right on it right where I want to be working. I'm not touching anything that I just did since I tend to work the wrong way [LAUGHTER] I don't know why I do that, but I do it every single time. I want to work this way instead of this way. At this point, just go with the flow and get a stick to rest your hand on so that you're not smearing any of this yummy ink work that you're adding to your piece if you're working on top of any area that is going to have anything still wet on it. Look how pretty that is already. Super pretty. You can do other colors. We can take this time. I like the delicateness of the ink and so you could choose to work with all inks. You can work with the pens if you like the pens. I also like we did in our sampler piece, maybe adding some black pen work to our piece, and you can do that with any favorite black pen that you've got. I've got some Posca pens. I've got just black ink pens for drawing. I've got the Pigma pens, whatever your favorite pen is. Now is the time you can come back in here and add other fun stuff like we could come over here and we could outline these little white, whatever spots that I added with the silver watercolor. We could do something like that. We could do lines, we could do marks, so it's fun, different. If I could come over here and do pick a little space where the watercolor is a little different, and you see some natural separations, and we could do some line work, through those fun. Line work is really fun, and I like that. I'm doing it in black because it's like the black is showing through from the back. But you could do that in any color. You could do it in white. You could do it in gold. We could definitely pick our gold ink and do it in the gold. This is a fun project to do on white paper also just fun. Circles like pretending like it's planets feel. I do like that right right. I feel like I could get away with some of that over here. I really like where I have this going. Then what you want to do is just mark make to the point that you're like, Look, we got going here. I love this. I wish I had done something different here. Let me add something here. Let me do something there feeling like a fun little real slight black lines would be fun, so I'm going to add that as an element. I like that these are real subtle, so they're not like super obvious and you got to get close and be like, oh, what is that in there? Just another element to add into our piece for me. I'm loving that. We could even come out here and do like we did with the goal, we could do black circles and is it going to be super obvious? No. But can you see it just slightly? You actually can [LAUGHTER] and I like that implication that there's more out there. See now I'm loving this, and once you get to the point that you've got all the marks and doodles and interesting things that you think you want to put in there. Then we can peel the take and take a look at it. You can live with it for a while. You can add more stuff to it later. You can play. We could even maybe add some other little marks in here with our markers just as extra little interest points, and then peel. I've got mine taped down because I did want a little tiny bit of a black edge. But you don't have to do that. You could do it without tape down, but I wanted to a little bit of an edge, and if I've lost the edge because I dried some of it, that's okay. But we could keep just mark-making and doodling until we're okay, I feel like this has done, and I actually like all the yummyness notice I've got going on here with my gold and stuff. [LAUGHTER] This was a fun painting day. Then when you think, I like where it's at. Let's take a look at it. We can peel the tape and just see what we got. Totally looks like we got some very pretty sparkly outer space going on here, and if you don't want an edge, you don't have to tape it down. I just like taping stuff down and having like a little finish to it, and if the tape is pulling on your paper, heat the tape with a heat gun that will release it. I did such a tiny edge that I'm not worried about it. Look how pretty, oh my gosh, and then look at it sparkle in the light. You feel like it's a really pretty outerspace. Just fantasy painting that we've got going on here. I hope you enjoyed this project. This is actually super fun. I love how these turned out as you get a little closer, you can see more details, and as you pull it back, some of the details blend in and make their own little patterns. So I hope you enjoy this project. I can't wait to see your fantasy outer space of planets, and I'll see you back in class. 9. Shimmering Abstract Landscapes: For this next project, I thought it would be really fun to do a atmospheric triptych landscape. I'm going to give it a try out with my favorite landscape-making brush, my Winsor and Newton Number 4 calligraphy brush because I want to make it look like it's atmospheric a little bit, not predictable and just see what we can come up with. I've done this technique with my regular Kuretake watercolors and with my graphite colors, and it turns out so beautiful that I thought let's do a metallic on black set. [LAUGHTER] I am going to just make sure that you got a little bit of spray bottle to wet stuff down, and let's just think about this. Do we want a bright, vibrant landscape? I'm not feeling that, I'm feeling like maybe a gold on gold. We could use the same exact colors that we just used in that other set that we did or, go with me here, what if we do like a set of these fine tech ones that I have got over here. We could do like a copper landscape with some gold. I'm feeling that one actually. Or we could do like set of blues. But I think maybe copper and gold, so let's just see what we can get. Let me just activate those with some water. The metallics seem to be a little harder than regular watercolors so you do need to go ahead and let that sit for a second as you're getting started. These are the fine tech pearlescent colors. I've got the copper and golden rose. After using these now I feel like I need some more colors, [LAUGHTER] crystal gold. Because that first project got me so excited that I'm like, let's paint a million things, they were so good. I like that the little containers that these in are bigger too because I like to get my whole brush just roll that around, get lots of paint on that brush, and then I'm going to do just on the side, starting out, getting my little landscapes started. I've just picked this middle color to do that. It's not the darkest color, it's not the lightest color, it's just in the middle there, and it might be a good color for the sky. I'm treating these like maybe I'm in the mountains and I'm looking out over the mountain range and it gets lighter and brighter and real pretty as it goes further back, and that's how I'm thinking when I create these abstract landscapes. Feeling like we're off to a good start already, let's go with this darker color up here. I'm just going to lay that color right in with it. You could try the regular watercolors on here too. I just was really hopping on the metallic wagon after doing that first set that came out so amazing. [LAUGHTER] Look how pretty this is, oh my Gosh. I've never played on black watercolor paper till I came up with this idea and I was just like, I'm going to go for it, we're going to do it. I've played a little bit with these after I came up with the idea and I'm like, oh my Gosh, amazing. Now I'm just like obsessed. But like for years and years, I don't play on colored papers, I normally work with white paper and go that way. But sometimes, you know what? A colored paper can get you outside that comfort zone and get you creating in new ways that you didn't think of, and so I love that about playing with a paper like this that you might not ever have tried before and it works just like a regular watercolor paper. It's not like you've got a ton of things that you got to learn to go with it. Look how beautiful that is. These colors almost look a little purply to me, so I'm thinking after this dries, we could do some interesting stuff on top, maybe in shades of lavender or purple, I don't know. I'm feeling like it started out good. Let's let this dry and then we can do some mark making on top. This is dry or it's dry enough. I do caution you about using a heat gun on these because you don't want the heat to release the tape like I showed you in the last video that heat releases that tape because then you don't want your watercolors seeping up under the tape. I did walk away and make myself look the other way for a bit and let that dry naturally. I do recommend you let it dry naturally if you can. Now, you just have to decide, is it done? Maybe it is done for you. Do you want to add some yummy marks and some other things on top? Maybe I do because I think layers are what make these so interesting. I think I'm going to go ahead and pull out my half-tone stencil circle which I love and we can decide at this point, do we want to add any color on top of this? Because in the spirit of trying new things and being a little different, we can definitely put some things on top of here and I'm thinking we can do regular paint. Like if you've got some acrylic paints that you like and you think, that would mean an interesting something on top, you could do that. If you've got some metallic stuff like paint, or you could use acrylic paint. We could come back in here with some charcoal maybe on top because nice and muted or we could do some soft pastels on top. We could just come back with some acrylic paint on top in the right color. You know how I told you this look like it had purple in it? We could pull out maybe a purple and see, do we think maybe we can fit that in, I'm not really feeling that. Just look in here at some paint options in my drawer that's beside me. See now that's a really pretty dark blue, but I'm not sure. That's a really pretty dark. See now this paint would have been good with that blue set, but I don't think for what we're doing that's the right one. Some of these paints here are metallic so I could forgo using my favorite ink and very easily use a pale gold metallic acrylic paint. I've got several metallics in these. These are the matte acrylic paints. But look at this gold, I've got several different metallics in those. Here's the silver. I just tend to gravitate towards my favorite gold because every time I use it, I love what I've done. [LAUGHTER] That's how you get into what some of your style is going to be. Look at all these metallics, you could do anything like that. That's an option. So many options. What do we want to do? I really love the halftone stencils, I'm feeling that we're definitely going to do that. What do you think if we do that in this silver? I will step outside my own comfort zone [LAUGHTER] and use a metallic that's different than the metallic I always grab. But when you find your favorite thing, you're so happy when you're done creating and it turned out fantastic. Let me move all these little watercolors out of my way and we will put some gold. Silver. This is metallic silver. Whoa, too much paint. [LAUGHTER] Oh well. It wasn't coming and it wasn't coming and then there it was. [LAUGHTER] I'm feeling like the halftone circle, this is such a good. [NOISE] I'm using a dry artist sponge. These are little circle sponges that are called artist sponges. I like to use it dry with a little bit of paint on there and then just go for it. Look at that. Whoa, it's very psychedelic in the feel. I feel like I need another row of circles down here. See there we go. That is super-duper cool. Really wasn't expecting how much I was going to like that. [LAUGHTER] Good one. Maybe I'll do that over here. Since we're doing a little triptych, we'll just go ahead and go for it. Look how pretty that is. Let's put some on here, but maybe not as much. Just let it be part of the set but not identical. See, now that I'm loving, I love this little line almost that we got in that one. That was a good pick. [LAUGHTER] That was super fun. Put too much of that out, but that was super fun. Now you can decide, do you want to take any of your pens, make any marks, do any dots. I did like the black dots on the black paper. I'm wondering if I picked the black Posca pen. Let me find the black Posca pen. Here we go. That one's a brush. That's not what I want. [NOISE] I like the [inaudible] but the [inaudible] pen has a very fine line. [NOISE] There we go. Yes, there we go. I want a bigger dot, I think. Just because it's what I'm feeling. Then you could just strategically make some marks, dots, and lines just to see what can you get. I did pick one color to do these black dots in because it's a triptych that we kept going, keeping that color going in that line of stuff just because I thought that might be interesting. That's super fun. I'm loving where this is going. Now, do we need any gold or do we need black lines? What do we need to take it to the next level for us? Just step back and think about that. What else are we looking for here? I've got some oil pastels. I'm wondering if we come in here with maybe some oil pastels and add some interesting marks just as a variation in texture and in sheen because these are not shiny. What do we think of that? I actually have that little pad of black. I could test it out and say, well, what is this even going to look like on here? It's definitely going to give me, say, that lighter color in there. I can either do some interesting lines. That might be something I could do. This is my little horseshoe, this is my little strap. Maybe I could do some interesting lines or I could do a pattern of dots or something, that might be something. What do I do here? I'm feeling like just a pattern in here. What you could do is if you've got three of these and you've got one that's my least favorite, perhaps, you could be like, let me do this one on the least favorite and that way I don't do it on the other two if I don't love it. [LAUGHTER] But I actually like all of these. Look how cool that looks, actually. I'm thinking that's pretty fun. I like it. Let's go ahead and just commit. I like that it's not shiny so it's going to give me a variation on that. As the light hits it, it's all of a sudden going to be [NOISE] not shiny. [LAUGHTER] Oh yeah, see I like that. Because I'm using these to finish them off, I will spray this with a light coating of the oil, Fixatif by Sennelier, because I'm going to need to fix this oil pastel so that it does not stay wet forever. [LAUGHTER] See now, I'm really loving that. I'm almost wondering, would I love another color on here? I've got the gold. I could come back and do something else just because I love it. I like that right there. It doesn't have to be a lot, just a tiny bit, as a fun little element, but you're like, oh, what is that going on there? You got to get close to even look and see it. I love little surprises like that in my pieces. I'm loving this. These get better and better for me when you get these layers and you're like, oh, I love this. Super cool. I love that. I'm pulling these out of this little 24 set of Sennelier. I like it. It's got enough colors in there to be like, I can pull from this and get some interesting stuff, but it doesn't have so many colors that your overwhelmed and feeling stuck. I'm really loving that. Do we want any other lines or marks? We could come back in here and play with something dark, if we're thinking, I don't know. If we play with a graphite pencil or something, then we could add some lines in there without committing terribly and being like, oh, it's just an extra element that you see if you get real close and you could drag it through the oil pastels. That totally made me happy. I'm going to do that again [NOISE] because it breaks up those pastels too, I like that. Just a little scribble. A little scribble on your art. Always happy. Super cool. [LAUGHTER] Now do you need any black in there? What else do you need? I'm feeling pretty good about this. I think what I'm going to do is peel the tape and let's just see where we're at. That doesn't mean that you can't do anything else to it, if you're looking at it and you're like, oh, needs another element, after you get it peeled, but it is nice at some point to be like, it could be done, let me peel the tape and look. I'm going to peel the tape. I'm going to use my heat gun to heat the sides and stuff so that I guarantee I don't tear my black paper off. [NOISE] Look at these when we get that tape peeled. Holy cow. Look at how good that turned out. As we can see that shine in the light. I don't know if these come across on film the way they come across in person, but oh my gosh, they are so pretty. Now that you've got them separated from the triptych, now we can decide, do we want it in a different order than what we originally made? That's always fun to look at and say, oh, I like this order or I like that order better, but holy cow, check out how good these look. I think that I'm actually going to call these finished at this point. Also, if you didn't go to the very top or the very bottom, you could choose to trim that if you wanted, but I actually love these just like they are. Look at how beautiful. I hope you have fun with this technique. I can't wait to see what you're creating. Definitely come back and share some of these with me and I'll see you back in class. 10. Final Thoughts: As we conclude shimmering abstracts exploring metallic watercolors on black paper, remember the incredible journey that we've taken together. You've discovered the magic of metallic watercolors on black paper, honed your skills and embraced your creative voice. Carry these lessons forward, continue exploring, and let your art shine brightly. Keep creating and may your artistic path be filled with endless inspiration.