Watercolor & Ink Minimalist Abstracts

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] A lot of times when I start creating I want to limit the supplies that I'm using because I feel like limiting what you're using opens up the possibilities. You're no longer stuck with the paralysis of, oh, no, what color do I use? What do I pick? Where do I go? What am I trying to create? You don't get stuck when you limit yourself right up front because now you're thinking, oh, I've got these three colors, I've got this ink, what can I make today? Let's just get to it. Today, that's what I did. I picked some colors, I picked an ink, I picked a paper, and I said what can we create? I'm Denise Love and I'm an artist and photographer. Today, I want to make some minimalist abstracts with you. I've picked a few watercolors, I've picked an India ink, I have a dip pen, I have some water, and we're just creating with really a minimal amount of supplies. I want to create a minimalist abstract. I don't want it to be too busy, I don't want there to be lots of action going on, I want the colors and the marks to speak for themselves and it be very calming and peaceful, that's where I came up with the projects that we're doing today. We're going to start off creating a little leaf project. We're going to move up to some little abstracts. Then I'm going to make a little bit bigger abstract with some wonky shapes and some scribble, and just see what beautiful pieces come out of our play today. I want you to relax, I don't want you to get stressed about the page being white or what color you should use. Pull some colors out and say, I'm going to create with these today, just see what I can come up with. You have so much fun at your art table when you don't put all the pressure and expectation on yourself to create a masterpiece. I wasn't trying to create some amazing pieces of art today, although several that I created I was like, wow, I love these. I think by sitting and enjoying and relaxing and creating with a minimal amount of supplies, you'll find some joy at your art table, you'll want to come back and create again. That's the purpose of most of the projects that I like to post. I want you to get excited about making some art. I want you to come back over and over again and enjoy the time that you spend creating. Not everybody has all the hours of every day to create. We have a minimal amount of time that we can spend in-between the rest of our work life, and our family life, and the other things that we have to do. I want you to make the most of that time when you come to your art table. I want you to leave energized. I want you to love the projects that you created. Hopefully today's projects will leave you energized. You'll have some fun. You'll have some new discoveries in the way to work with these materials. I can't wait to see what you're creating. Be sure to come back and share those with me. I'll see you in class. [MUSIC] 2. Class Project: [MUSIC] Your class project is to create some minimalist abstracts of your own with any of the techniques that we're looking at in class. You can substitute the watercolors that I'm using for any watercolor that you happen to have on hand. I can't wait to see what you end up creating, so come back and share those with me. Create a couple of abstracts and come and post a project, and I'll see you in class. [MUSIC] 3. Supplies: [MUSIC] Let's take a look at the supplies I'll be using in class today. I wanted to limit myself on the materials that I was using to create these pretty little abstracts. I've decided I want to use some watercolor and I want to use some ink. I want to use some of my Schminke super granulation colors because I like the colors. I was wanting some type of brown or smoky brown or indigo or something in those neutrally colors, but the only watercolors that I have in some of those tones because I also have acrylic inks and my favorite acrylic inks are these Daller-Rowney antelope brown and indigo. But the indigo is so strong, and I really want something soft and subtle and almost scratchy. I want it to not be in your face. The inks are so vibrant that they're more in your face. I want this to be a little more subtle, and the watercolor to fit in with the really thin light marks that I want to create on our little abstracts. I'm going to use the super granulation pack, and this is the tundra pack. I like this because it has an orangey brown, a dusty pink, this violet, pretty sagey green. There's a lot of colors in this set that I really love. This is my Schminke super granulated palette. I certainly could use one of these other palette things that I've got the colors out for, and the other two sets that I have on here are the Haze collection and the Forest collection. Mainly I'm going to stay up here in the tundra set, I certainly may move around to one of these other sets that I already have on my palette. Also for the ink, and you can use acrylic ink. You can use any type of ink that you have on hand. I'm going to be using Black Magic, which is India ink, and I want it to be something black, so that's what I'm going to go with. I'm also paper wise going to go with the Canson Heritage cotton pad, this 140-pound cold press. I had a little bit bigger pad that I used the last two sheets of. I had the 10 by 14 pad. This is the 9 by 12. I cut the sheets of the 10 by 14 into several 5 by 7s. Then I trimmed it down on one of those to 3" by 6" because I thought this was so beautiful. I'm going to create on this paper. Experiment with your papers. I did some paper tests and experiments and decided the Canson Heritage. Just to show you some of my very rough and crude experiments. But I was playing with different watercolors. I was playing with different papers. I was playing with different shapes, and then I was like, aha, this is the one that I truly loved and want to create with today. A lot of times I will do paper tests and pull out all the different papers that I have, and cut that sheet into several little pieces so that you can do that for other projects too, and save all your little scraps, and do a paper test and say, aha, this is the look I'm going for. The other thing I'm going to be using today is just an inexpensive dip pen. It's a nib and a holder. Any dip pen is fine. You can use a ruling pen, you can use your Kakimore nib if you've got that one. I'm going to be using the cheap nib. I like it because it's an ultra-sharp tip, and it gives me a really nice thin line, almost shaky, which is exactly what I wanted. Then I got a brush for the water that I'll be putting water on. This is my soft Aqua Raphael brush number zero. Just in case at the very end if I decide I want some dots, I've got my Posca pen. But I really feel like the Posca pen might be too cutesy, and if I do a dot, maybe it should be in that black ink. I always reserve this for a just in case. I have it out just in case. That's the supplies I'll be using in class. I wanted to keep it simple for myself and see what I could create today. Let's get started. [MUSIC] 4. Small Leaf Project: [MUSIC] Thought it would be fun to start this with a very simple leaf or vine. What I want to do is on this paper, just create two leaves. Just let the watercolor do what it's going to do. I'm going to put my brush down and make a stroke and come back and make another leaf. Then I'm going to come back with the India ink while the leaves are still wet and draw my very thin, shaky almost vine and some extra leaves. I want to do it while it's wet so that I can see a little bit of the ink spreading into the watercolor. I'm feeling that might be really cool. I'm just going to pick one of the colors here, in my Schmincke and I'm going to go down and create a really beautiful leaf pattern. Then we will come back, dip our pen in our ink. I want it to be a really thin, almost more than one line. Come up through the leaves, and then I can create some other fun, almost shaky leaves to finish it off. Look how cool that is. These are so pretty, let's make another one. I'm just keeping this as simple as you could possibly keep it. But I just want to see, once these dry, I think the leaves will be super, super cool. I'm going to pick a different color. Maybe I'll come over here and don't ask me what colors these are in these sets. I just know it's the three sets, but this might be the blue, we'll see. It's very grayish. Actually that might be the violet. I'm not positive though, but look at how pretty that is. Before you think to overdo it, just do your lines, get your leaves in there, and then set that to the side and just see what you get. This is a really fun warm-up practice. Something that we can just do early on and see what can we get. Let's just do one more. I wanted to actually be even a little bit scratchier, let's go with this. I wasn't going to pick one of these other colors but I'm going to go for it anyway. That one's a gorgeous color. Oh, there we go. I wanted that to be a little bit spreading around in there. Oh, yeah. I'm not wanting the leaves to be perfect. I want them to be scratchy, almost like an unsure hand. I just like the really pretty elegance of that. Look, it's beautiful. This one I could actually even come back because I feel like I didn't get enough color here on this and I could dip some more color in there and just see. Oh, yes, I like that better. Then we can just let these dry. We're going to let them do their thing. But look how pretty those are. They're just elegant, they're very simple. Another thing that we could have done is we could have done our ink drawing first and let it dry. I actually have a little sample here. Let's just do this on a little piece while we're doing these. Why not? We could do the ink first and then come back and strategically add some watercolor. What if we did that? Let's do the ink first. Just create. Let's just see, let's just create not doing anything specific here, but maybe just a vine. Maybe that vine has a leaf at the end. Maybe there's a pretty leaf here. My goal is not perfect, even, weight lines. I really do want it to look like I got a shaky hand or something. Let's just pick whatever this color is. I don't know what this is, but we're going to pick it. Look at that, that's super cool. Again, my goal is not to have a perfect leaf because I can certainly create a perfect leaf, but I like it when they're not perfect and just fun. Really pretty. We're going to let these dry, do their thing. I love the way this one is granulating out into some other colors. That's really pretty. This one's one of my favorite, I love this one. I did one earlier on that's also really beautiful and my very favorite. It was using just a light blue and it was really pretty. Super fun, very easy, simple leaf pattern just to start off our abstract thinking. Then in the next project we'll go a little bigger and do some different shapes. We won't do a leaf, but this was really fun for a small project. I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 5. Small Abstracts: [MUSIC] Let's create some bigger abstracts. I'm just going to go with a shape and some ink lines and just see what can we get with something like that. We can start off by putting water on the paper and then coming back with some watercolor and dipping that in. That's one way that we can do this. We could also start with a bunch of watercolor on our brush and lay down that way, but I like seeing how stuff spreads around in water that's on the paper. I'm tipping the paper just a little so I can actually see where that water is. But I think it would just be fun to say what can we create if we just did something like this. We can put the paint on the brush too just like I did. Actually, on this cotton paper, kind of like the control that gave me with the paint on the brush. There we go. Now we know, try both ways and see what's going to give you the look you like. I'm going to paint on several different pages because I want some of these to start drying before I try to ink them. I'm just in my Schmincke collection of watercolors and now I know I like dipping the brush in and pulling that out. Let's just do that and see what we can get. Maybe I'll dip some other colors in here, and we'll let that do something fun. I've got a bunch of paper over here. I want you to just do a whole series. Just see what you can create a whole series wise, maybe different shapes, maybe different sizes of paper. Dip some other colors in and see what does that add to or change or do for your piece if you've got other colors shining in. See and I really love what that's doing right there. Now I feel like I'm hitting my stride. This is why I want you to do a bunch of these because it's going to take a minute for you to be like, Oh, okay, this is how I like this, like look here. Look at that one. Now I feel like we're getting somewhere. I want you to do a bunch of these. I want you to just try it out, put the water on the paper, put the paint in. Maybe start off with paint in your brush. Look at that one. I feel like I know which one is going to be my favorite now. Let me put that one there. Let's do one more. This is why I want you to do a bunch. I want you to get into the point where you're like, ''Oh, this is what I like. I've hit my stride.'' I like barely brushing the paper here with that brush because then I get these wonderful streaks where there's no color on the paper and you just get these wonderful variations of colors. Look how beautiful these are. These I feel like are almost ready for ink. These are a little bit wet. I think I love this one out of this little set that I just painted, but I do think it's fun to just see what can we do if we do this or what can we do if we do that. I want you to experiment. I want you to find the joy in the experimenting because now I can see you're getting to a new collection. Let's not do this on my favorite one first. Don't do your favorite first. Do your least favorite first. Let's call this the least favorite. Let's just figure out, if we're doing some lines what do we want these lines to do? Do I want them to be a shape? Do I just want them to be fine lines out there? I don't want it to look like writing. What are we trying to accomplish? Now that's pretty cool. This one's my next least favorite. The least favorites are the practice ones, but see what that ink did when it touched that wet paper there. I like that. I like watching that ink spread into that watercolor. That was pretty cool. Third, getting around to almost my favorite, but not quite my favorite. But it did get me to my favorite pieces. Then when you get to where you're like, ''Okay, I think I'm liking this,'' start to experiment with some other patterns. It doesn't just have to be lines. You could have dots, you could have crosses, you could have stars, you could have flowers, whatever fills that moment. Whatever you're thinking you're inspired to do like, oh, I feel this, or do I do that? You can see where this watercolor is still slightly wet, my ink spread way more than I might've even liked. I'm thinking, okay, that was a nice lesson. Now I know. Maybe let that dry a little tiny bit longer. If you're wondering like how you know where to put what and I just want to tell you, I don't. I just decided in the moment that felt good, so let's try it, but I am liking it. There's no rhyme or reason as to why I did anything in a particular spot. I just thought, let's try this. While we're looking at this, I absolutely love these colors together. It's almost like a really grayish lavender like that violet, that might be the violet. Maybe the violet and the tundra orange. I'm liking that. Now I feel like, okay, now let's go into these and see what is this going to look like. I'm going to do some lines in here, maybe some dots and some other mark-making, but now I feel like I've practiced what do I want these to look like. See now like that, that random circle-y thing I just did, surprise. It's pretty cool. Maybe we want some black dots in here. Look at that. Super beautiful. Now I'm loving this. This was my least favorite of my favorites. I want you to work your way up to your very favorite, and just see where are we going to end up as we get to our favorite. Then once you've made all these little decisions, then you're be like, oh, okay. Now I know what I'm creating, I know how I want these to look. I now have a destination in what I want. Of course, that doesn't mean you might not get to your favorite and then totally mess it up, but you're less likely to do that. Now you did so many that we know exactly how we got here. We could create some more. They're not always going to be exact to what you created first, but we could create more. Don't let that fear of messing it up stop you from creating your best work. Look at that. Oh, I'm just loving this. Not about perfection, it's not about where are you putting this or that, it's just about, creating the moment. Look at that. Oh my goodness. I'm loving that one, I'm feeling like this purple one is going to be just as gorgeous. Do I want to do the same lines? Maybe. Oh my gosh. This one is amazing. Look at that. Oh my goodness. This one. This one. See? This is why you work your way up to your favorite, because now you're getting excited with each one that you're doing and you're like, okay, I can see this as cards. I could see this as a whole series that you take to a gallery. I can see these as little gifts, fun things for the art fair. I can just see this as being just something exciting that made you have a really good day at your art table. Look at that. Oh my goodness. These are super fun. I just wanted something to have fun with at my art table. I didn't want it to be very stressful. I didn't want it to be tons of supplies. I wanted to work my way up to what is it that I really wanted these to look like, and I did it. Look at that. I started off thinking one technique. As I was working that technique, I was like, ''Okay, I'm feeling it.'' I thought I wanted to start with water blobs and then I did some water blobs and I was like, I don't know, maybe water blob and some paint in my brush. Paint in my brush was definitely it. Then we got to paint in the brush. Gorgeous abstracts. These are gorgeous. These two, these three, these are so beautiful that I want you to create some of these and have this much excitement when you do it. These are super fun. I hope you have fun with this simple technique. You can use any watercolor you want. You could use acrylic ink. They're going to be more vivid. My choice today was to be not as vivid as the ink, so all the watercolor and ink, cheap dip pen, nice sharp edge to get that really fun, cool, thin detail that doesn't overwhelm the piece, but makes it really exciting when you get up close. I can't wait to see what your little abstracts look like, so come back and share those. I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 6. Larger Shapes Abstracts: I was going to stop at those little projects. They were so much fun. But I want to go a little bit larger and slightly different than what we just did. Let's just do some random shapes and some scribble. Those random shapes might look like circles, they might look like rectangles, they could look like rocks. You could just be creative there in what your shapes look like. I'm just picking some of my Schminckes again, and feeling like maybe I could drop some other colors in with these as I'm going. I am putting the watercolor on the brush and making marks and things on the paper, like I was doing there on my very favorite pieces at the end there. Maybe drop some color in here. Just push that brush around and see what can you create and what are we going to end up with. I want to do a couple of these. I'm going to go ahead and paint a couple of these, let them dry a little bit so that we can add some inks. I've got three pieces of paper here. I'm going to set this one to the side and let it dry. Let's pick a different one. I'm picking up different colors on each one, just to get something different and say, oh, I didn't expect this. Like right there, whatever this green was, I didn't expect that. This is how we make these really fun discoveries, is playing on our paper. No idea what I just did there. I think I dipped into that purply color instead of that blue I was thinking, but that's okay. That's different. All right. Now I'm just getting crazy. [LAUGHTER] Oh my goodness. Let's just get crazy. [LAUGHTER] Oh my gosh. Look at this color. We're just going to have to look here. I think that is in the haze. I think that might be haze black. Let me just look and see what's in the forest, just to make sure. That could be forest blue. I think that's forest blue. [LAUGHTER] Look how gorgeous forest blue is. [LAUGHTER] Oh my goodness. All right. What do we want to put with forest blue. How about this yummy green? That was like, whoa. Yes. Oh my goodness, look at that. This is a sap green that we're touching in here, now, why not? [LAUGHTER] Oh my gosh. Look at that color. Now I'm running out of that color. I better be with that color was because I will put that back on there. I'm just pushing that brush around. I'm not trying to get anything specific. I just was like, whoa, look how cool that color is when we pulled that out. All right, what are you feeling? You feeling good about this? I'm feeling good about this. Let's go back to this first one. Let's let that one dry. I am a blue-green girl. [LAUGHTER] But this one's pretty. I'm liking this yummy on the tundra. I hope that's the tundra say. Yes, because I feel like I'm on the tundra here like maybe we're at the Grand Canyon and this was a canyon, and that's the stripes on the canyon. We're just going to scribble. Scribble don't have to mean anything, it's just scribble. But look how interesting, fun scribble makes our pieces. Then in my scribble, I also want some dots and maybe some lines. Because that was a little bit wet still. That's all right. Maybe I want some lines. If I wanted lines, where would I want those lines? Whoa, maybe right over here. Look at that. Let's put some dots over here. Now I'm looking for some balance. Did it look balanced without the extra bit? Drawing my eye, I'm drawing on that way. Can we draw it back this way? Kind of feeling that right there. What do you think? Whoa, yes, loving that. I'm loving that. Let's go over this one. Let's set this to the side. When can think, is that done? Do I need to add more to it? I'm loving the combo here, especially this lower one. You may be doing this thinking, oh, those little lines are just not bold enough. That's your preference. Look what I did. Oh, look at that. This is your moment. This is your time to decide, is going to make this impactful and beautiful and finished for you. What does this need in your eyes? It's going to look different for everybody. That decision-making is what's going to make these unique and beautiful to your creating. Oh, yeah, let's do some lines over here. Fill in that. Look at that. I am in love with this one. [LAUGHTER] What do we want to do? Maybe we'll do some dots down here in this pretty blue. Now see this one is way more dry than the other ones, so my dots are nice dots, they're not spreading out at all. I love that. You just think about letting these dry for a moment more, if the dot spreading into the ink is not doing what you thought it should. Look how pretty that is. I'm feeling good about that right there. Let's do the third one. [LAUGHTER] I did one before I was starting, so I do actually have a fourth one. It's really fun also. This is how I test out and think, whoa, what do I want to create, and I'm like, oh yeah, let's make some of these. That's the one I started with, where I'm like, okay, I can see a little set of these. Oh, look how pretty these are. I'm doing something similar on all of these. I'm not worried about trying to make each one different. But I like that. I'm not trying to recreate the wheel here. It's okay if you do something similar. See now that's still wet, but I actually like that, so let's let it do it some more. But this is how you come up with a fun series. Look what that did right in there. I could let that dry longer and I would have liked it too. But I like that it did some yummy smearing. Now this is India ink that I'm using. Once the ink is dry, you cannot re-wet it and make it do anything else. But the watercolor you could reactivate. You have to be real careful about what you're putting on, where you're putting it, and did you need it to reactivate, and are you using a material that will reactivate? Because this won't reactivate, I'm using something that's not going to do anything more than what I'm doing right now. Then it dries and then what we've got is what we've got. Whoa, see, look at that. For some reason I'm just loving that right up there. Fun. Okay. Whoa, look at that one. I'm feeling like that one is what I want. Love it. All right. Check it out. Let's go a little bigger. Let's make some little shapes. Let's draw some black ink on top of it and just see what pretty little abstracts are we going to get, if we do this? Do we want it to completely dry? Do we care if the ink spreads in our wetness? Because this one I had wet watercolor and I put the ink on and it spread really fun. I thought, okay, I like it both ways, that doesn't bother me, I don't mind it. That's how I knew when I was going to create here if I hit a wet patch and that ink spread, I'm okay with that. I like what it does. It adds a little extra interest, another mark or scribble or line, or a little bit of ink that we didn't expect. I'm loving what we got today on these bigger pieces. I hope you have fun making some of these. I can't wait to see what they look like. Come back and show them to me. I'll see you back in class. [MUSIC] 7. Final Thoughts: How much fun is it working with a very few amount of supplies? Little bit of watercolor, little bit of ink, some paper, and just go to it. How did you enjoy these simple but elegant abstracts that we created today? I'm super excited about this. I can't wait to turn the camera off and make some more myself. I truly enjoy creating these. This is the best time that I have up here when I'm sharing some projects. I'm like, "Look how cool these came out." I hope you had some fun discoveries with your materials, and you discovered some new ways to work with it. You're like, "I like this rather than that because I had some fun discoveries with you on camera because I thought I'm going to start with water, and in the end, I'm let's start with the watercolor." You discover these things as you sit and create a little series. I like to create three or four or six. The first couple are not going to be the best. They're going to be your, let's figure out what we're doing pieces. Then you're going to work your way up to, these are amazing because it's all the techniques I weeded down in the first few pieces. That's exactly how that worked for me today and I love it when things work out and the pieces are beautiful, and I'm excited to share it with you. I hope you have fun creating these projects today. I had a great time in class with you, and I'll see you next time. [MUSIC]