Watercolor Abstract Landscapes

1. Welcome: Hey. I'm Denise Love, and I want to welcome you to class. Let me show you what we'll be doing. In this class, we're going to be creating some really pretty abstract watercolor landscapes. That's what I'm calling these, abstract watercolor landscapes because they have a horizon line and they imply that you've got a sky and a foreground, some type of ground. I'm playing with different colors, I'm playing with mark making in their different layers so that we layer things up. I did play with a different type of paper to see how would that be different to the one that I knew that I was going to love just to play and experiment and the more cottony softer paper, or maybe it's just thinner, gave me a completely different look than the one that I had envisioned. That was fun to experiment. I actually started coming up with these in my sketchbook and very color washing, I guess you could color it with some horizon lines, and then experimenting some more with different layers and adding in some mark-making, and then that is how the eye got to the final landscapes that I wanted to create. These would make good pieces of art framed up. You could use these as cards that you give away, our original little pieces of art. You could tear the edges like I did on the square one for a pretty deck old finished edge and put that right on the front of the card, and then you're sending some yummy original piece of art, I love that idea. You could put scripture, or quotes, or some saying that you like if you have some good handwriting that you want to, then put that on there and have a good quote or scripture. Tons of things that you can do here with these beautiful abstract watercolors. You can enlarge these, of course, making them even bigger than I chose to work on today. But I like getting my ideas all hammered out in my sketchbook, and then working on smaller pieces and then moving to maybe a little bit larger piece just to see how I can scale up different ideas. We're making a couple of watercolors, and here we're using different colors, we're experimenting with some mark-making. If you get really close, you can see all the layers and the details that the marks and the layers of paint add. We're having a lot of fun creating beautiful abstract watercolor landscapes today. I hope you enjoy watching this. I can't wait to see some of the ones that you create, so let's get started. 2. Supplies for our project: [MUSIC] Let's talk about the supplies that I'm using in class. I encourage you to work with what you have. You don't have to go out and buy supplies to practice and play and experiment with this technique. I am using some 140-pound cold press watercolor paper. I just happened to be using the Arches because I wanted to experiment with a nicer grade of paper. I started out my experimenting in my sketchbook. This is an eight-by-eight sketchbook with 110-pound cold press watercolor paper. I knew I liked the cold press, and so I figured why not play with the Arches since I had it. But if you don't have the Arches, play with whatever cold press watercolor paper that you have. Then I encourage you also to play on some other surfaces that you might not normally experiment with to see what you come up with. I always start off in my sketchbook, my little art journal, I guess you could call this, and just see what do I like. Am I going to like color combinations? How am I going to layer these colors? This was my favorite. I don't do the sketchbook in class, but that is how I got to this technique for my own art-making. Cold press watercolor paper. I just cut that big sheet into smaller pieces to work with. You can do that in any way that works for you, but I just cut it into fours, cut it in half the other way. I'm using some watercolors. Pick out your favorite colors to work with and try this out. I have a little quantity of some of my own favorite colors pulled out of a Daniel Smith box and a Sennelier box. Then over here I have some Sennelier tubes that I squeezed out into a ceramic paint panel to use. In this class. I'm using a couple of these colors, this chromium oxide and this cobalt green that I really love. Then I'm using a few favorites out of my little palette. Sometimes when I'm talking about Daniel Smith or Sennelier, I switch the names and call it the other. If it's the Sennelier color, I might call it Daniel Smith's, so I'll apologize for that right now. If you look up any of the colors that I call out in class because I do try to tell you what they are, if you don't see it in the one brand, look in the other brand I might have mistakenly called one or the other. But most of the ones I'm using in here are Daniel Smith. There's only one or two that are Sennelier. For the most part, you can assume if I'm using a color out of here, it was Daniel Smith. If I'm using color from over here, it was the Sennelier. [LAUGHTER] Pick out some watercolor that you like. I'm also using a Posca pen a little bit, white. I'm using just a mechanical pencil. I've got some painter's tape to tape off my drawing. Then my watercolor brushes that I was using today in class are just a little bit nicer grade watercolor brush. These are from Michaels, so they're not the most expensive, but they were the nicest grade that Michaels has. These are the Aqua Elite, Number 10 and Number 12. If you go to the art store, some of those brushes go up to $100. These are in the $20 price range or less. But you don't have to use those. You can use whatever watercolor brushes that you've got. That just happens to be what I pulled out to use today. I hope you're going to enjoy this class and playing and experimenting, creating some abstract watercolor landscapes. I will see you in class. [MUSIC] 3. Landscape - Blocking out colors: [MUSIC] Let's get started with our project, and I'm very excited for these. We are taking our inspiration from the ones that I did in my scrapbook that I just loved so much. Some of these work out great and some don't work out. If you have some that don't work out, don't despair. I had this one that didn't work out, and then I switched all the color around and just made a block of color. But some of these look different than I thought they would and I really love these couple right here. Those were my very favorite out of this, but I had so much fun just experimenting with color and a few marks in there and making what I'm calling an abstract landscape. I've taped off a couple of small pieces of cold-press watercolor paper. This is 140 pounds. You can use whatever brand that you like. Usually, I'm using a medium-grade paper, and I would call the sketchbooks. You can work in sketchbooks too if you like. I love working in my sketchbooks. This is about 110-pound paper, and it's nice. This is our teaser book. That's an eight by eight. It's a good size to take things off and experiment and test things out. I do like how these came out in the cold press. I've picked a nicer grade of cold press just to play today, and this is a nine-by-six sheet. It was a bigger sheet. This happens to be the arches because I have it. I think it'd be fun to play on it because it is a very good quality watercolor, but you can use any brand. I usually use the ones from Michael's because they get their two-for-one sale going and then I buy a couple of pads at a time. I've cut these into fours, it's one big piece, and I've cut it into fours. These are about 4.5 by six. I have just taken painter's tape and taped off a couple. Then I have one other little piece of paper which may or may not actually be watercolor paper, and if it doesn't work out, that's okay. It's Choosing Keeping which is an art store in London that I had gotten some paper from. But I like it because one edge has a very pretty torn edge to it. Some other pieces of art that I did on that paper came out really beautifully when I was doing some of my other abstracts. Let me just show you. It's from the other abstract class. But look how pretty those came out, and so I thought it would be nice to just experiment on that paper today. I'm going to set some of these to the side, and I like working on more than one. You can fold your little taped edges down, but I thought it might be easier to get to take the tape off when we're done if I left the tape up, but it might stick to everything. [LAUGHTER] I've got just a fairly nice brush that I'm going to be using. I'm using two sizes. This is the Aqua Elite 10 and 12 from Michael's, and I like them because they have a nice sharp point. I'm going to be using those. I got a little piece of paper towel here that I might put to the side just to wipe my brushes if I need it. What I like to do with these is it's really more about more water, less pigment. Just to get started, I might start off with this lapis lazuli genuine. I really like this Venetian red. These are Daniel Smith colors. I'm just going to play in this little color palette of colors that I have pulled out of Daniel Smith and a couple of Sennelier colors. If I name a color and you don't see it in Daniel Smith, then it's a Sennelier. These are Sennelier over here. I really like this blue, and this green, and this ocher, and these came out of the tubes. I do have some titanium white. These came out of the tubes, and I've squirted them into the ceramic palette so I can use them again. I do love those. These are what I have determined are colors that I like to work with that I enjoy. I have done several things as experiments with color samplers and stuff and then thought, I really loved these, and put them to the side out of all my watercolors. That's how I came up with this little block of colors and then these are all ones that I had in the tubes that are really liked that I squirted out. Most of these are Sennelier, and there's two Daniel Smith there. They're like rocks that they create these out of Sennelier I had thought they were so amazing [inaudible]. I thought they were so amazing when I saw him at an art show that I just had to have them. Of course, I got the very last one, and there was some artists in there that was taking her time looking around and I grabbed them and this one is Kyanite Genuine. These are rocks and they've got a shimmer to them. The artists saw me get those and was like, oh, no, you got the last ones. [LAUGHTER] I'm like, I'm like sorry. On this, I'm looking for more water, less pigment. What makes them so pretty is when you get different shades and things going in the piece, and then at the end, I'll add a pretty horizon line in there to make it a little landscape. But I'm thinking that maybe down here, it's going to be this ocher. The lapis lazuli genuine, which is an ocher color. I'm just very carefully swishing that on a little bit of a light color, a little bit of dark color, and then I'm going to let that dry. I don't want to overwork it. I really want to let the watercolor have some light ethereal layers in here. Then I might just come touch a few more colors in there. Then I want the top to be almost a fiery sunset. I've got a little spare piece of watercolor paper over here so I can see how much water to paint do I have there. Because I want to be real careful. This is how I get ones that I don't like as much. I tend to overwork things when I'm going. I have too much water. I have too much pigment and then I tried to add more water, I add more pigment, and then I'm like, I've ruined it. I do try to be careful here and just see how much water to pigment am I really working with here. I want these to dry a little bit before I come back and do more to that, which is why I've got four that I've already taped up. I'm going to set this one to the side before I overwork it, and do another one. Maybe I want this bottom to be more like a grass. Let's see what we got here. We got this pretty Serpentine Genuine. Let's just see if we like that. See, that's really pretty, maybe we'll have a little grassy meadow here. Now what I like about this nicer paper is it's really grabbing the paint pigment a little different than cheaper papers. Look at that. Then maybe on that sky, what do we want to do on that sky? Maybe we want it to be blue and cloudy maybe. Let's go for this cerulean blue. The cerulean blue is really super blue. You got to be real careful with how much paint you pick up with that, but I want this to maybe be some sky and some clouds. I don't want to overwork it, so I'm going to stop and let this one dry. Let's set that to the side. I really like my blue-green over here in the Daniel Smith and that's the Sennelier. That's the chromium oxide green and the cobalt green. Let's just try those, and maybe we'll do the green at the bottom and just see how's this going to look maybe a little tiny bit different than this other green and blue one that we did with the Sennelier colors over here and the Daniel Smith ones. Look at that. That's really pretty. Again, I'm trying to pick up a lot of water, a little bit of paint, and then I might go back add a little bit of pigment at the end, but these will dry and just have a really wispy, ethereal look which is what I want for these. I want these to be atmospheric landscapy, not in your face bright. Let's just try some other colors. Maybe I want the sky to be more red. Let's try this Mayan Red. I believe that's Daniel Smith. These are abstract watercolor landscapes and so you might just get some inspiration from some actual landscapes for colors and stuff, but then we're not trying to do anything specific. Let's try this Viridian, which I believe is also a Daniel Smith color. I'm not trying to emulate a really true-to-life landscape, but you could find some of those that have the sun going down, and you can see mountain ridges and some other things and maybe emulate something that you've truly seen. That's really pretty. Then I'm going to try this paper that I like with this edge just to see it might not come out, but we'll try it. I really like the pink ocher colorway, so I think I'm going to go back to that. I've got this Venetian red and lapis lazuli that we're experimenting with, and this paper is going to grab the watercolor differently. That's okay, that's the fun part of experimenting to see what is the different surfaces that you try out. What are they going to do for you? How are they going to make the pieces different and just what can you get? I am aware that this paper is a little different, and we're going to get a little different look and feel, and that's what I like about it. That's really fun. I think I'm going to let that dry and pick up one of the ones that we did earlier. Let's go back to that very first one. We've let that dry pretty good. Now, I'm actually going to start with another layer and maybe start creating a horizon line and maybe even some color further down. We're just going to imply other things in this imaginary landscape. I don't want to leave any weird squiggle brush marks when I'm doing that, so I'm being careful and working those back in a little bit. I also have some titanium white over here that I might use because I might want some white on here. This is getting into a little bit of our abstract pieces that we did in some of our abstract watercolor classes. We're playing in that feeling. This is just a mechanical pencil. I'm going to put some marks in here and maybe squeeze this watercolor around with my pencil. I think extra marks are what make peace interesting. You don't necessarily see them from far back but when you get up close, you can really see extra tiny little detail in there. I'm going to set this to the side. Part of the secret of these really doing well is not overworking them when they're wet. The ones that I liked the most, especially where I've played in my sketchbook and this is really good reason for you to experiment. Let's go back. I think this is the ease. This is a good way to experiment like what you're really going to like is do it in your sketchbook so that you can play around with techniques and figure out what do you really like. I like that. Let's set this to the side and let that dry a little. I really like it when I'm working on top of layers that are dry, so that you're not getting all the smear of the colors just blending in like I did on a couple of those. Oh look at that. We're going to have to let that line dry. I like working on top of dryer layers, you just get prettier things. It's more wispy, all the colors don't blend into each other. I don't think that's the color I use there. Is it? What did I use there? It might be the viridian. There we go. We come back and maybe add some mountain ridges in here, I could add a mountain ridge right here and then let that dry and maybe I'll come back with some more mountain ridge. We set that up there. Let's go ahead and put something here in our really pretty art paper. This paper is either I'm working faster or this paper is taking a little longer to dry and I think pure cotton and its really different. Let's let that dry. Let's go ahead and pull this first one back. If it's not dry enough, we have a heat gun. [LAUGHTER] I don't really like to dry everything with the heat gun. I like some of it to dry naturally because I think the colors just do something different naturally than they do when I'm tacking color on. But when I'm doing several pieces and I'm ready to move on, I just go with a little bit of heat if I need it. Look how pretty that is. I almost want to have like a little bit of that coming out. Then I might also want to go ahead with this titanium and you could do this with acrylic paint too, if you like or paint pens. If you want to really make it look like we've got some birds in the sky and maybe we've got some clouds up there, you could do this with acrylic paint also, if the watercolor doesn't do enough for you, because this watercolor does seem to sink into the background a bit. That's fun. I'm going to go ahead and I'll let that dry a bit. Then let's look at this one. This one's really pretty. This is the one with the pretty cerulean blue. That's a Daniel Smith color. That's too much pigment to water and now I think I'm going to dock this off with my towel because it's just more than I like. I want more water, less pigment, but this cerulean blue is the one that's just overwhelming. Then I might come back in here with this white, which we may or may not see because, I don't know that white might just not give us enough difference. Oh, here we go. We've got some green mixing up in there, but that's fun. Look at that. That's real pretty. Let's set that one to the side and let it do its little thing for a minute. That's fun too, is to set them to the side and say, what are these going to do? Might come back few more layers here and it's almost like a little mountain ranges. This might be fun to add a little bit of mark-making in here so we could go ahead. Well, that's a little bit wet and do some scribble and you will have to do that. I just like to do that. That one's turning a real pretty. Let's go back to this one. That's got these to some LEAs that are so pretty. Coming here with a little bit of this blue. That's real pretty. That's a little more pigment than I wanted, but I can come back in here and dot a little bit of that off. I do like some of the movement that we're getting in here now. Maybe I'll go ahead and with my [NOISE] pencil here. Go through the watercolor a little bit. Yeah that's pretty. We will let that one dry. [MUSIC] 4. Landscape - Adding details: [MUSIC] Then we might take our cotton piece here and add some more details coming across here. Then picking up a little more pigment here for this just to start applying something fun here with this horizon line. You could even go into some of these as we get further along and imply trees. Let's set this one to the side. That one's not really working out the way some of these other ones are, so I don't know if I'll love that or not. But we could go in like I've got this. That's like a burnt orange. I want something. Let's see. Do I even like that? Let's see. Let's do this burnt orange. This is Quinacridone Burnt Orange and I think that is a DANIEL SMITH color. But we could come in here and then imply other things in this landscape, buildings, maybe some trees, dot some other color in there for interest. Add some extra color into our landscape itself so it's a little tiny bit more abstract, but we have some good movement going. I love that. I don't have hardly any color up top. I did add the white, but like I said, that white really blended in. That one's almost too bright, but it's fun to add some of those variances. Let's just add a little up here, not so much that it's changing the look of my landscape. But that little tiny bit of color is really nice. Then let's go back to this blue over here. Now I do have this blended funny up into the top there. This one is this over here. Let's just play and start making some other things happen here with our horizon line and maybe a little more movement there in our lower part. In this one, I picked colors that were super strong. We might embrace that with this cerulean. The cerulean is such a strong blue. I even noticed that with acrylic paint, it's so strong that it takes over [LAUGHTER] when you use it mixing stuff and I've noticed that quite a bit. Let's set this to the side and let that one do its thing. That might not be my favorite. This one I'm loving. We might take a little bit of this yellow ocher. That might be Naples yellow. [NOISE] It's this one, Sennelier Naples yellow. But it's an ocher color and I love anything ocher so you see a lot of ocher over here in my little color palette. But we might start just dotting some of these other colors in here and seeing what interest can we add to our piece. You can see there I do really light on the yellow, but I added some into my horizon line. Let's go ahead and let that dry a bit more. This is that one, the viridian. Now I'm just going to really start building better here on this horizon line, on this one too. Maybe adding some more movement in here. What I love about watercolor, they change a bit as you're going. They almost oxidized a little bit and you see movement in there that while it was wet, maybe you didn't see, but when it dried, it really stood out. I love that. I might put a little bit of this La pis Lazuli Genuine just to start tapping in some other colors here with this horizon and I might pull that down into my background a little bit. Then this one, I might come back and start moving that watercolor a little bit with my mechanical pencil. [NOISE] Because we could imply trees, we could do other stuff here, but keep in mind a little more organic there, a little bit more abstract. That's real pretty. Might be too dark, but we'll see. Let's go back to our first one. [inaudible] in a little more there. This is that Venetian red. I really want to have a little bit of this color be vivid, like nice and solid and vivid so a lot of pigment here at the end. I'm trying to work in layers. I start off really light and build up to statements and bright colors and things that are a little different. Maybe dot that and look how pretty that is. I know it's real dark right there where horizon is, I could have made that bigger. This just happened to be what I wanted to do on that one was a tight little horizon line. Maybe we're in the desert and this is the sunset and the sky was pink, things like that and it's what I'm imagining. Let's see here. This one, I don't think I'm going to love, but it was fun experimenting with a paper that's completely different than I was working with on all these other things. It's almost like I really like the vivid abstracts that I was doing first. Let's see what this is. That's pretty color. This paper, in my mind, probably works best for me with these pretty vividy abstracts. I have a class on making those, it's the watercolor abstracts class. But I think that's what looks best on this paper for me, but it's not dry though, so we can't really say for sure. Let's just throw caution to the wind and throw some other color in here. How about this teal color? What is this? This is Cobalt turquoise. [NOISE] I always reserve the right to not like stuff when it's done. I'm not sure I'm filling this, but a lot of times I'll say that and I'll think that and I'll think I just don't love this and I'll go back tomorrow and then I'm like, what was I thinking? That's fantastic. [LAUGHTER] You give yourself some grace. If you're not loving the piece today, wait a day and look at it again because these dry in such a fantastically fabulous way that tomorrow, I guarantee you'll like some of the things you didn't like today. Let's come back on here. Maybe we'll add some of this green, just the Serpentine Genuine. Start getting real heavy with some of this color. I like the way real heavy bits of color almost oxidizes for the next day, it turns into something just so beautiful. This color is green gold, it's more of a yellowy green. I think I like green gold just because of the crazy name. [LAUGHTER] I want to love that color and sometimes I do love that color and sometimes I'm like, what happened here? [LAUGHTER] Let me take my pencil, I want to play a little bit in this here with some mark-making. I just like little scribble on everything. Maybe I'll come back and dots some of this blue in here and just see how that mixes in, and then we'll let that do its thing. We'll set it to the side. We love this one or not? [LAUGHTER] You're going to hear me say that on every piece and then when we're done, I'm going to be like, look how amazing this is. I'm crazy. I'm just dotting those blue and that green out of my colors. I like what that just did. Then we might like a tiny bit of this coming down the side and I might get into this white and just start maybe dotting some birds up there, which I know the birds aren't normally white, but sometimes poetic license is what we're going for here. Maybe a little of this down here because some of these extra little layers and details that make these so pretty when you're done. I'm really starting to like this and if my white doesn't show up as white enough or my little dots don't really stay up there, I might take a paint pen or acrylic paint and do a little extra. These would be really pretty too if you like to do hand lettering or you have pretty handwriting. You might write a poem or a scripture, or a favorite saying. You could write on these. These would be really pretty as cards to send to somebody, this could be the front of a card, a beautiful handmade piece of art. We can hand-tear all the edges and make that really pretty. This one look quite doing some of what I want, but maybe if I add some of this white in here, we'll start getting some of these other layers on it that make things so pretty to me. Now see that I just added a whole extra bit of fun in there. Let's do that on this. Let's just add this. Make this particular layer or white layer where we're now tacking in some other details. This one is still slightly wet. Down here, that green gold, just totally shut off over onto that white, that was fun. That's pretty on there. Let's add some of that to this one. This one, man, it's really turning out beautiful. This might be the one that I want to frame. A lot of times when I'm doing stuff like this, I'm not looking for 15 or 20 pieces of art, sometimes I'm just looking for one or two that I love so much. I'm thinking, I can't wait to frame that. A lot of artists have different reasons for doing things. I like to do the art stuff for enjoyment, I like to teach the things that I figured out that I'm enjoying, but my goal is not necessarily to make big collections to sell in art galleries. But if that's your goal, then definitely work in a series like this. It's really fun. I don't know if I love everything I just did up top, so I'm going to take my paper towel and wipe some of that back-off. If it's still wet and your underlayer is dry, which is why I like working with this on layers with certain layers dry so that when I don't like what I did, I can pull some of that back off and I don't feel like I ruined my piece. That one's pretty. We'll let that dry. This one [inaudible] just might give up on. [LAUGHTER] Well, not yet, but I'm just saying. I am filling that, let's add some white in here. That this is better as an abstract paper with my other ones better than what I was intending for this because I liked the way it looks better on the clean paper. Let's let that dry. I need to let these all dry before we see if we want to do one last thing so I will be right back. [MUSIC] 5. Landscape - finishing up: [MUSIC] These are pretty dry now. This one, I actually like the extra white detail that I got on there. If you got it where it sinks in and it's not as vivid wide as you want, you might come in with a paint pen and do a little more detail. This would be the time to decide, do you want to do any writing on it? Do you want to do any additional mark-making? One of my favorite mark-making things is hash marks, not hash marks but little lines. Do I want to add any other fun, a little mark-making in here? I do particularly love rows of lines. That's just my own little thing that after a lot of doing stuff that I really love, I like scribble and I like things that look like writing, but maybe aren't necessarily writing. So you're just going to have to decide, what do you love? What things have you ended up really loving mark-making-wise that you'd want to include? I love that right there. I'm really feeling that I feel like this one is finished. I'm going to go ahead and start peeling the tape. The tape is my favorite part to do because it really turns what might be a mess into an actual piece of art because then it's framed out and it's beautiful. Look at that abstract watercolor. Number 1, I'm in love. That made me really happy. We're going to go ahead and let's do this next one over here. I do like this one too. I like my little hash marks. I might do them in a different place. I have myself a little bitty hash mark library [LAUGHTER] that I show off in several classes, but it's just where I've made different marks and ideas of things that I have drawn that I like that I want to maybe refer to later when I'm looking at something thinking, what kind of mark can I do? These are just some different ideas that I hang up on the board in front of me that I can just look up and decide what's going to work for a particular piece. I love that. I might want some more white in here. We might take our paint pen, then come back and add some more white detail. That's pretty. Added a little extra down there in the bottom. I could add some extra little birds and little dots here. Birds are almost like a little V in the sky so we could have that going up there. Just get that detail. Not super strong, but a little bit of something going on up there. I love that. So let's just see. After you pull your tape, you certainly might decide you need more marks or more of this or more of that and you can keep working on it. But look how pretty that one is. I just get so excited by the time I'm pulling tape. Look at those, this really does feel like a landscape. Maybe big field and tree line and the skies or something. I'm loving that one. Let's go to this one here. This one definitely needs some more something. [NOISE] It's fun too. If you don't really see some of these yummy details from far back, but then you step forward and you're like, look at that surprising little whatever that I've just discovered that I couldn't even see from further back. That's fun. I like when things are in there and you don't really see him until you get in close and take a look. We could come back with a white and do some marks in here. That's pretty. That's real pretty, I do like the white as some really subtle mark-making there. That's real pretty. Let's see what this one looks like peeled. Give me a break here how to put that tape on. [LAUGHTER] See, once you peel that tape, you get a feel for the piece and you're like, now I really do like that quite a bit better than I just did with the tape on it. Let's do the one I know is my favorite.[LAUGHTER] I think I will come in here with these elongated white lines that I know I love. I love this piece already. I'm telling you I love this one. We could add some little dots in here, just something subtle. They're not even super obvious, you're not going to realize they're there unless you really looking for them. I like these down here where they're just a tiny detail like right here, tiny little dots. I love that, that's real pretty. It's almost like we're continuing our line as a dot. So pretty. Get creative with a few of your mark-making, you don't have to be in your face there, it can be real subtle and just a detail that comes out when you get closer. That is so pretty. I do like my little hashes, so I might put some little hash marks in here, a little more pencil work. You don't have to work with a pencil if you don't want, if you like working with Micron pens or anything like that, I just like working with graphite. Look at that. [NOISE] This is so pretty, look how pretty this is turning out. Oh my goodness, I think this is hopefully definitely going to be my favorite because it's my favorite right now. I see us peel our tape off and see. It's so pretty, oh my goodness. Look at that, that clean edge around it. Oh my goodness. Definitely play with pink and ocher, some shades of pink and ocher. Those have definitely, even out of my sketchbook ones, have been my very favorite. I try out ideas and do different things before I get to working on loose pieces of paper, but this ocher pink, this Venetian red, and the lapis or some type of ocher. [LAUGHTER] It's just my very favorite. This one I love so much. I might take that one out of my sketchbook and frame it, but this one's got more detail in it, but look at that. It is so beautiful. Let's take the one that I don't think I'm going to like [LAUGHTER] as much and maybe add some extra detail in it while we're here. It's almost looks like when you're doing it in the sky with the paint pen, it's like you're adding some cloud cover or something different, unique. Let's see. I don't know about this one, but let's peel the tape and see. I like this paper, but this one might not have been the best choice for this type. I like those other abstracts better. So even peeled off, it's very interesting. A different look than on the other paper. I do like experimenting with different papers just for that exact reason. How do the deeper papers react to whatever material that you're putting on top of them? They're cleaner and sharper and the details are yummy. This one, it's less clean, it's less sharp. It's soaked into the paper a bit more. It is actually still very pretty and similar to this, but this is the look that I really wanted. I want you to experiment on different papers. Watercolor paper-wise, I've used cold press, but there's also hot press and there is rough press. The rough press, I do like for abstracts, it's very different. I did that in one of my other classes, maybe the art prompts class because I liked seeing a different surface that I normally work with and how does that work with my materials and effect everything, and then that was definitely a great lesson to experiment on different surfaces. When I'm doing something like this, experiment on a surface that you know you'll like, start off in your sketchbook more than anything. Like I really love starting off in my sketchbook, testing out ideas, figuring out, is this something that I want to create a few more of and something that I want to create on papers that I could possibly frame these up? This is one of my very favorite and like this, I can tell I was going to like these colors. This is a little more detail and more going on. This was a little softer and just experimenting and pushing around color. Play in your sketchbook and do a few of these and then decide if you loved it enough. Do them on some papers, tape them off, and then see what would you want to do with this. You could frame these. It could be a card cover. I got a little paint up there accidentally. I might need to trim this one now that I've been playing around all the little wet paints here. But I really love doing these little abstract landscapes, and if you like lettering, again, I recommend a quote, a piece of scripture or some saying that you really love. Those would be beautiful written down the middle of these or going on an angle or down this lower side. You could get really fancy with maybe some gold paint pen and a letter in something that you love. You can do a lot with these. You can even put like happy birthday and this can be the front of a card. If you wanted to, say, tear the edge of something, my very favorite way to do that, I think I'll do it over here on this little piece of one that I don't love so that you can see how to easily tear the edges. Let's just move our little watercolors out of the way. In case you want to tear the edge and you thought, well, how do I do that? I like to take a clear ruler. You don't have to take one of these great big quilting rulers, but I do like it because it lets me see through and I can figure out how much of an edge that I want. Let's say I want one line is worth the edges there, then I can just hold that down and pull that paper. [NOISE] There we go. Now we have pretty hand-torn edge, a little different than the deckled edge that came on the pad, but I could trim all four sides with the torn edge that I'm doing here and that would be beautiful. It's another element that when you frame it, you could frame it where you could see these torn edges or this could make it easy to then tack to a card to be the card front, and then we could tear the bottom edge to make it match. That's how you create your own hand-torn deckled edge. Look how pretty that is with the deckled edge. It's not that I don't like this because I actually do like this, but that's not the look that I wanted for this series. I wanted this little bit crisper, sharper look. But if you want to tear the edges so that they're really pretty, that's how you do that. I just thought I'd show you that. Experiment with your colors, you might look at some sunsets and see what different shades are you seeing in the foreground and in the sky or sunrises or something in the middle of the day. Look on Pinterest and you can Google Pinterest like search sunsets or sunrises, and then emulate those colors. I like the pink ocher colorway, and I like the blue-green colorway, so you could definitely play. This is probably my least favorite colorway, but I'd still like it, but it's my least favorite colorway today. Just pick a couple of colors and then go for it and then you can add some layers as you let those dry and tack on top of them. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you create. Definitely come and share your project with us because these are really fun abstract watercolor creations, I guess, you could call them. I want to see what you came up with and see if there's any ideas, that maybe I would love to try too or color combinations I didn't think of. I can't wait to see what you're creating and I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC]