Watercolor Mosaics

1. Watercolor Mosaics Introduction: Hello, my name is Ana Victoria and I am a watercolor artist, author, and teacher. You might know me from my numerous classes here on Skillshare. Today I'm going to share with you a method of painting watercolor mosaics, which is originally a workshop that I taught a couple of years ago during my watercolor retreat in Sicily, where we were inspired by an excursion where we went to see some ancient mosaics. I've had a lot of requests for this topic for an online class, and I'm finally bring it here to you today. I'm going to show you a few examples of personal work that I've done using this technique, as well as some physical examples from the internet of real life mosaics so that you can see references. We're going to do some classic warm-up exercises and finally, we're going to do a masterpiece of our own. You're going to do your personal drawing and then you're going to add mosaics all around in your own personal style, which is something that I always encourage. This class is meant to be a workshop. So you should have some basic watercolor techniques already. I am trying to bring to you a few more tutorial-like classes. I have tons and tons of foundational classes already up on Skillshare, so if you are in need for basic techniques for color theory, etc., feel free to go back and take all of these foundational classes. You do need a certain level of at least skill or precision or just a tiny bit of watercolor knowledge to take this class, it's not too complicated, but I do highly recommend having some basic knowledge before you dive deep into this mosaics class. I'm super excited to see what you all make. I'm sure you're going to make beautiful creations and I'll see you in class. 2. Supplies: The supplies you'll need for this class are quite simple. You're going to start out with some watercolor paper, and this time I'm using Canson, it's cold pressed paper. It's not too rough. I like this specific type of paper, this block because it has a spiral here and you can open it up and work on several projects at the same time. I think I've told this to you guys before if you've taken my other classes. I really like this because sometimes I am in the middle of one project, especially when you work as an illustrator, you have to work on different things at the same time, so I like this. It doesn't have to be this specific brand or anything. Just make sure it's watercolor paper. I really like to use this size, nine by 12 inches. It's a comfortable size for me, but the size is totally up to you as well. Then you're going to need some watercolors and in this case, I have said Sennelier pen set. This is how it looks like while I'm using my watercolors, so you use these little areas here as palettes to mix your color. If you're using tubes or liquids, which is also totally fine, you're going to need a separate little dish or little palette to mix your colors but if you use pen sets, this area here is what you're going to use to mix your colors in. I have these here and also a side note, don't get too caught up, it doesn't have to be this brand. There's tons of brands of watercolors out there. They're all really good as long as they're at least semi-professional or student grade, that should be fine, and you're going to need some brushes as well. I'm going to move this out of the way. You're going to need some brushes for this specific class, since we're going to be painting mosaics. We're going to be doing a lot of fine, small areas. We're going to be painting small areas, so you don't need huge brushes. I personally have been enjoying these brushes lately. These are by Princeton and, I'm using a size one and a size four. But actually, I'm going to actually stick to this one, but anything from a one or two or maybe even a three will work. Make sure it's round with a tip. These are really great brushes to use with watercolor because it picks up enough water and then you have a really fine tip where you can be really precise in details. I also have this liner brush in case you ever need to do a very tight space. I might be okay just using this, but these are suggestions. You'll see as the class goes along, what you'll be using, but these smaller brushes are good to have. Then you're going to need a paper towel. You can use, this is like kitchen paper, which I like to use because it helps if you spill something, you can pick it up easily. A lot of people like using rags or cloth, which is, that's what I use in my studio regularly, but I also like to have one of these handy because these are really good to pick up paint in case you made some mistake. These will last, I mean, you'll use one of these for a long time. Then you will also need some water. I have two different waters here. Your paint won't get too dirty here because we're going to be painting very small objects. But a lot of people get a little stressed out about seeing my dirty water. A lot of people like using two waters, one for dirty water and one for picking up clean water. Personally, I'm not too perfectionist that way, it's not a big deal for me, especially with this project, but you can do that if you want to, or you can just use one little glass of water. Then finally, what you're going to need is, I like to have a little bit of scrap watercolor paper like this. This is really good to test colors out on or work out a little color palette, so I recommend having a little bit of scrap watercolor paper. That's it. That's all you need for this class. Let's get started. 3. Examples: Before we get started with the actual painting part of this class, I want to talk to you a little bit about why I'm teaching this class and the story behind it. I will start off with showing you this piece here, which is basically what we're going to be doing in this class. This is a little bit of a larger piece, but it's a mosaic inspired work of art. The reason that I painted this was because I was working out the subject matter for my yearly watercolor retreat which in 2018 was in Sicily, and the theme was painting mosaics. Because we were going to do an excursion, visiting these gorgeous mosaics. I developed a workshop around this to paint your own version, and there's many different ways to do this. This is the first piece that I painted previous to the retreat to share with everyone there. Obviously I am a huge fan of starry nights and the universe, and you can obviously tell by this painting here. I'm going to share a couple more with you, this one is more of like a monochrome version of that, it's also a mosaic piece. This has more irregular shapes and these are starburst. I'm using a paint called Lunar Black here by Daniel Smith which is really cool pigment of black which has these magnetic particles in it and separates. This is a fun activity or a fun type of art that I like to make when I have a new watercolor tube that I'm excited to try it out. Then this is one that I was painting while I was in Sicily teaching this watercolor retreat, and I never finished it, you can see, but it's a cool way to see the work in progress as well. Finally, I have this beautiful Jade heart that I also painted while I was teaching that retreat in Sicily, and I'm using cascade green here which is an amazing Daniel Smith pigment. It's actually two pigments in one paint and you can see how it separates and it has all these cool textures, and that's just some of my personal preferences while using paint. That part is really not important in this course, but I know that you guys are interested in these things so I like to leave that out there sometimes. This is the type of artwork that were going to be doing. Maybe I'll share a little slide right now of some of the work that the students were doing during our retreat and this type of workshop I had only taught in-person until now, which I've gotten a few requests to do. I'm taking the retreat workshop that I did in Sicily inspired by mosaics and I'm bringing it to you here digitally on Skill Share. This is the really fun type of artwork that were going to be doing. It's all made just with watercolors. I'm going to show you a few visual references before we get started. This is like my moleskine sketchbook. It's a watercolor paper sketch book, if you're wondering. It's really good for travel. It just closes up like that and that's that. I actually just did a Google search and found some images that I think would be interesting for you guys to observe before we get started with this class. When we paint mosaics, we start with a very simple drawing, which you'll see when we will do our activity. I would say there's three things to consider. This is a good example, this one is like a modern type of mosaic. I would say there's three things to consider while painting mosaics like this. One of them is color and tone. This is an actual mosaic, so this is a little bit different. When we work with watercolors there will also be a little bit of value which just is basically the amount of water that we will be adding into certain areas. Something else that's important is the shape of your mosaic. In this case, she's using all little squares, which is something that you can do, or you can do something else, which we'll see later on and direction. All of this is basically the direction that your mosaics are going in. It's going to be a really important factor. You can see that for example, here there's a circle shape, and this is like an underwater theme, and you can see it's very flowy. There's a lot of movement this way, another circle up here. The direction in which you're mosaics are going is a big one. Here is a more geometrical design. I'm putting all the credits here and I'll also upload these to the discussion boards so you can find these images on your own. For example, this is an Etsy seller. This is just a mosaic, it's a Greek revival mosaic that I found on Shutterstock which is based on these Greek motifs like negrecas right here. You can also see here. This is an analog color theme. She's using just a couple of different colors here, but what really matters is also the direction. You can see that the color here is what it's actually helping us notice which is which, because it's a little grid. But when we go into the circle here, the little mosaics are designed in this circular motion, same within here. These are just really good to observe before you start painting your own because it will give you some ideas. Then we have, this is one of the leaves mosaics. This is very different than these, but I thought it would be a fun example. If your style is a little bit more like experimental, you can also do larger mosaics and maybe like paint something within each area, which might make more sense when we actually start painting but I wanted to share this anyways. Then we have these different types of mosaics which are much more orderly and geometrical, very clean, very precise. These are little tiny bars that are in different directions like a Chevron style. It really depends here on what kind of person you are, what kind of artist you are and what will be drawing you. Here's another very orderly type of mosaic. This is actually like a repeat, but I think this class is basically art therapy. When you start to paint these, you'll notice that you'll get into this flow and you'll lose yourself a little painting these little tiny areas. It's nice to see different styles. Then this style, I think I'm more of this style, where I like to paint irregular mosaics, and this is actually a stained glass. It's not necessarily mosaic, but it's the same principle with the style that we're going to be painting. If you want to see, just for fun, look up some references and do a little research before you can look up stained glass, and it'll be the same principle. Basically what it is is that we have a little bit more of irregular shapes here which is the type that I like to do. The artist here has some rectangles in this area, but then has these crazy stars, and she plays a lot with color to distinguish what's what. Then these rays of sun that come in here like this, which are rectangles. Just a few different references that I wanted you to see before we get started. Basically what they all have in common is that they are small shapes that are repeating themselves, and each shape is quite close to the other shape. That's exactly what we're going to do in this class, and you're going to make a piece of beautiful art. I can't wait for you guys to start painting these. I know I've gotten a lot of requests for this class on Instagram, on social media, and I think it's time that I share this with you here on Skill Share. Let's get started. 4. Practice: Before we start our big project, I thought you guys will enjoy a previous lesson on painting Mosaic shapes so that you can get some ideas and also practice a little bit before committing to a larger piece. I'm just getting a little bit of paint ready here some Magenta. I'm just going to go over different styles of mosaics that you can paint and you can mix and match any of these within your final paintings. So the first one is very simple. It's basically just little squares. The cool thing about painting with watercolor is that sometimes one of the little squares will have a little bit more water or the paint might be a little bit more opaque, so you'll get a cool sort of variety of colors here. You can also start playing around with color and experimenting and while any shape is wet, you can add a little bit more paint in there. So the trick to painting these mosaics is, if you've taken my class, the very first one, modern watercolor techniques for beginners, this will remind you a lot of the precision exercise we did. It's basically painting small shapes as close together as you can without having them touch each other. I'm just filling it in this little area here. You can be as precise as you want to here, these little squares are obviously not perfect. It really depends on what your style is. I like to have it, you know, still have sort of like this pen work flip to it. You can paint a shape like this, like little squares maybe if you have a shape like this, a curved area. You can also do little squares that go in a specific direction here. All these little guides which you'll see when we start our actual larger art piece, since there is no watercolor actually touching the pencil lines, you will actually be able to erase all these pencil lines which will be very satisfying and your artwork will look super clean and crisp and it's just a great feeling. This is just a mosaic with shapes, with squares, I mean, a very simple one. You can also play around with more irregular shapes which I'd say it's my favorite way to paint these. Let's see, you can start by, this is just very random just playing around. Within each area you can also play around with the water and the paint. This method is very fun because even though it's repetitive, there's also a certain amount of, I don't know, each one is a little bit different so I'd say it's more intuitive. You just let the shapes take you wherever they want to go and then you can also get a little bit more precise. I wouldn't say this is not necessarily the style that I would use, but maybe you are the kind of person that likes things a little bit more planned out, a little bit more geometric so maybe you can have specific shapes. I'm thinking of one of the examples that I shared with you before. Right now I have one side is a little darker though one is the same color but with more water. You can maybe continue on following a shape like this, just crowding some clean water. I mean, it really depends on what your style is. So this type of mosaic has a little bit more of a specific intention to it. You're painting specific shapes in a specific direction with a specific amount of water. It's a little bit more thought out or then you can get kind of intense and even think of doing a specific shape like hexagons or something that can fit well with each other. I'm just trying it out here, I hadn't really thought about this too much, but I think this would be the shape. You can also find the shape that fits well with each other. This is sort of reminding me of a beehive and it's just really playing around and letting your imagination guide you a bit. Sometimes even doing these little practice rounds like this will help you come up with an idea for your drawing. So I'm just doing this for fun because when you have a little bit of wet watercolor, you can add some more paint into it and give it an interesting texture that's one type. You can also do some triangles. They don't even have to be the same type or size of triangles. Just making sure that one side fits in with the next. I mean there's tons of different things you can do here. Try to think up of a few different shapes, and practice, and practice, and practice. When you feel that your hand is steady enough, I think that's when I would dive into painting the actual watercolor. As you do the larger piece, you will also get tons of practice but if you are newer to watercolor, I would definitely recommend going back to my modern watercolor techniques class because we do tons of drills like these. That really help you get the hang of how to use the medium in general. Then, there's other type of mosaic that you can do, which is a little bit more intentional. I'm just going to flip this over a little bit. We can do a couple of diamond shapes. So this diamond shape will be a burst that starts in one point from the middle, and eventually we will get a star shape. So the basics here are just to play around with small shapes in order to fill up larger spaces. If you have a star shape like this, with another color or you can start to do irregular shapes around that or with little square shapes, you can go all around this and give it a border, you start to mix and match and play around. The important thing here is that you practice and see if you can come up with new types of shapes that you can repeat on your own and this will be a very good practice session before we start a larger painting. 5. Final Project - Part 1: The first thing you're going to need to do for your Mosaic painting is sketch out a very simple, try to make this pretty simple, especially if it's your first time. You need a simple composition, a simple drawing with large areas to fill up. You guys know that I really love star themes and the ocean and nature. Nothing would make me happier than for you to choose themes that you are personally interested in. Please don't feel like you have to copy the drawing that I'm making. I think these classes are way better when you actually try to integrate themes that are important to you or that maybe go with your personal style and you use this technique to do that. So, as I'll share in the discussion board some pictures of what my students did and each one is super different and super unique. And that is what I am hopeful you guys will do in this course. So, this is just to show you what the drawing will look like at this point. It's a very simple drawing. We talked a little bit about direction of your mosaics in, when I showed you the reference pictures. As you can see here, I am doing back with the waves of the ocean, I made a point of making sort of larger areas with these waves and they're all sort of moving around in its very flowy manner. Then I have these larger stars and the moon and they all have a little area around them which will have mosaics going in a specific direction like that. And also to sort of emulate that they are glowing. So if the background is sort of like a bluer color, these little glowing areas will be a lighter blue. So you have to start thinking of how you want to begin to paint your mosaic and I'll just show you. I also wanted to do this one because I would like the one that's plain sheets and it's easy to go back to and share this example with you. So for example, what we did with the moon here is sort of, this is kind of what it's going to look like, where it has the moon in different shapes, and then all around here, I have a smaller little mosaics that are in a lighter blue bin than this in the background; and this is just a fun way to add, sort of like a glow. I did the same with this big shooting star here. And then these other stars I didn't do it with. It's just sort of like part of the background. This is really whatever you wanna do. It's all about your creative just designer. I hope the examples will help you with some ideas. So basically that's it. Now I'm going to start painting and as I paint, we'll talk a little bit about how we're doing this and you guys might be having some questions right now, which we will work through as we paint. I'm just setting up my area to begin painting and something that is super important before you get started is to actually create a color palette. So here I worked out two different color palettes that I could go with. This class here is meant to be more of a workshop because there are tons of different aspects that you can go into. But I've decided to make these workshop classes because I have ten sculpture classes that are super foundational, that will give you all the basics. I might be referring to other classes in the path that I've done in the past, in case you want to dive deeper into certain subjects and in this case, I would suggest taking my color class, which is the finding your color identity class. That class is super helpful and it will really come in handy with this specific course because color is going to be really important when you make your mosaics. And not only what colors you're using, but what colors you're excluding, that's going to be really important. So in this case, I knew I wanted to have a blue as my background. I knew that I wanted it to be sort of one of my base color. But then there's two different ways I could go with this theme. I worked out a little warmer one and a cooler one, and in the warmer one, I have a little bit of ocher and yellow, and it turns sort of greenish; and then in the cooler one, I'm working with magenta and purples and maybe a little bit of darker blues, and I tried out a little bit of this cascade green that I really like, by Daniel Smith, that I was telling you about in the first video. So, I sort of am feeling more of the cooler color palette for this. It's important to work it out because you're really going to want to stick to this. Otherwise it will be this whole I don't know. You'll maybe lose control of what you're doing because you have to be mindful of what areas are going to be in what tones. So that's just a little note here. I'm going to go with this color palette and I'm just going to put this to the side and actually just begin painting. So I have my waters here and I'm actually going to leave this one closer to me and I'm going to start out by painting some of the ocean waves; and I have a little bit of this fun cascade green here. For those of you who are wondering about basic watercolor techniques, I am just grabbing some clean water. And this is a little bit of the two watercolor that I had here. I like to mix and match a lot. If you've taken my other classes here, you'll know that. I'm going to just prepare a little bit of paint. I don't want it too opaque or too translucent, sort of like a mid-tone here and basically I'm just going to start painting one of these waves. Right now. What my mind is starting to think of is I'm going to need for each little wave to be in a certain direction, but then also the ones that are next to each other need to change a little bit in either color or in value, or both. So, I'm going to just dive straight in here [MUSIC] and I'm going to start painting little squares, little rectangles, little shapes. [MUSIC] Now this work here takes a lot of precision and if you feel that your hand is a little wobbly, I would definitely go to my very first class; modern watercolor techniques and do that precision activity a whole bunch of times. You need to be, pretty steady here. Notice how each little shape is super close to the one next to it, that's what's going to give it that wow factor and this type of painting is very therapeutic. You're doing a lot of repeat shapes over and over again. But it's not too boring, to the point where [LAUGHING] you get tired of doing these because there's a lot of play that goes into it to with color, shape. So, that's just a little fun tip here, so here I am doing a very basic shape it's just rectangles. I'm going very close to each shape that is neighboring. A lot of patients, a lot of precision. Remember I'm using the number one brush here you're going to need a brush that has a fine tip but can pick up enough water. So also, I'm going to flip the paper around here remember to move your paper around as much as you need to for you to feel comfortable. I really love this cascade green because the pigments start to separate and you get a few different tones within just one type of paint. Don't feel like you need any special paints or [MUSIC] anything to make this, is just stuff that I've been collecting for years and just personal preferences. So a lot of steady hand work here. So this is one style, I'm actually going to paint all around to demonstrate different types of shapes that you can do. This is sort of like a rectangle that's going in one direction, like rectangle shapes that are pretty similar. And now what I'm going to do is actually play a little bit with the star-shapes and I'm going to use some of those magentism and purples that I liked in my color palette. And it's also good to have your little scrap paper here to the side so that you can sort of test out colors. Sometimes they'll look a little bit different, on the pallet. So here what I want to do is since my background's going to be more bluish tones, I want to get a little bit of more of this here. So that's looking kind of cool. So I think I'll work with the one up here. So now I'm going to begin playing with shapes, I have this star-shaped and what I want to do is create little smaller shapes within the spear shape to sort of make a composition. A composed large shapes by smaller diamonds and again, I'm just playing around right now I'm experimenting and using my imagination when you have these larger shapes of your own you'll start to think of different ways to fill them up. I'd like to call it loose geometry, it's not too rigid, it's not too serious this is about having fun, but really practicing your precision while you're doing it. So again, I'm going to flip my paper around and noticing how I'm also playing a little bit with color here. I have the same value, but the tones are changing with each little diamond shape. So I'm using a diamond shape, a bunch of diamond shapes. See that got a little too close, don't worry don't get too stressed out I'd rather it be you try to get them really close to each other and sometimes make a little mistake where they bleed into each other, which is fine when you finished the whole piece of art and won't be that noticeable. [NOISE] And then I'm going to choose a base color for my background and I think I really like this blue, which is a really cool blue. Yeah I like that, I'll do a mix of different blues but I think I want to use this blue kind of like as a base to mix in with other blues. So what I'm going to do is, water some of this down. I'm going to grab a bunch of water and actually now I'm going to use little tiny shapes of mosaics, which are little squares and start painting around this star like this. [NOISE] So these tiny mosaics are acting like a border to this star here. The smaller the squares, the harder, they'll be to control. But if you can pull this off, the results will be super special. At this point, I've done 1, 2, 3, different types of shapes. I have my width that's rectangles, and it's going in one direction. I have my six-point star that is composed of diamonds to make up the star. Then I have this little tiny square border which is going around the star. A painting like this will take you a few days. Don't feel like you're taking too long. I heard someone comment in one of the classes. How long does a complete painting actually take? Something like this, it's fine to come back to, since you're working with wet and dry. You don't really have to work with your water that much. You can have it rest for a few days, and then come back to it and that's, okay. You can take as long as you like. It's very therapeutic. Something that's really cool about watercolors specifically, is that I'm only using one pigment right now, one specific blue, and each time I pick up something, this is something that you can't really control too much when painting with watercolors is the amount of water that you pick up. That's a positive because, that means that each little mosaic is going to look a little bit different in value, and that's going to give it so much depth, and just like an interesting look overall. I'm just continuing to paint my roll sheets here, and I want to make this star a little prettier. While your paint is still wet in each little shape you can also dab in a little bit of a different pigment, just to make it interesting. Something that occurred to me, just now, because you can also continue adding a little bit of details. This is just all part of the creative process is that. I think that I would like to make a larger burst around these shapes. Have some extra mosaics go around each glow of each star. I'm just very lightly suggesting this with my pencil. Your pencil is going to be totally erased once you finish, which will be very satisfying. But I just wanted to share this with you just as part of the creative process. See, that looks more interesting to me now. I'm actually going to go in with another water down, shade of blue, which I'm just testing out. I'm going to go around this star here. See sometimes when they bleed into each other and it's something you can't fix. I just go ahead and merge them. Like what just happened there, and that's fine too. Really, the most important thing about painting mosaics is planning ahead. Just knowing what your composition, what your shapes are going to be, and really practicing your precision work. I'd say those are the two fundamentals here. Then working out your color palette before time will also be very, very helpful. So again, I'm just continuing to do the little shapes here. Fairly watered down because I want these to be glowing as opposed to my darker night sky. Then I'm going to grab some more water pour it down, flow in the different tone and go around with larger squares like this. So again, these shapes, and this specific color, are confined to this area that I have here. So basically I'm going to continue to repeat what I just did here would follow the rest of the stars. Except these smaller ones which I think that, what I'm going to do is have them, I'm going to use this sort of shady violet. I don't want these stars to be a big burst, I just want them to be subtly inside the background. So I'm just going to have these be like the shadow violet, and these will just be as part of the background mosaic. Make sure your areas are dry before you place your hand somewhere. So this is the only actual full shape that I'm painting, and then what I'm going to do is when I start painting my background, and I'll demonstrate on this little area, I'm just going to grab some, I have a bunch of blues here. This is honestly the way that one would mix your watercolors. I'm just testing it out here. So I have this organic mix of paint that I've been using, and I'm not too caught up on what tone it is, it just visually looks good to me and that it'll fit in here, and I'm also going to add a little bit of this blue that I decided that I wanted to make, and it look as this. I'm just mixing that into here. I'm not being too picky or worrying too much about what exact tone it is. What's going to be a little bit more important here is the value and the area that I'm going to paint for the background is going to be a little bit more opaque. The paint will be thicker. So for example, here now that I have this little start here I'm going to actually start painting some on the background. So the shapes that I am going to use for the background are irregular. I'm just going to have fun mixing them all in together. And for example, here, and this is going to be very close to this area here, and I'm using the edge that I had from this star, and then I find this little strange area here, just fill that in. And I think I'm going to add in a little bit of purple. So I'm just grabbing some purple and I'm sort of adding it to this area here on my palate. So I'm going to not being too picky. Watercolor is about letting go and just flowing and just you're never going to get the perfect exact mix here. And also by mixing your colors this way you'll get organic colors, colors that are just yours. So I'm actually going to start making some of these with a little bit of violet in them, and this is basically it. You're going to slowly, no rush, paint tiny little shapes all around different areas until you get an amazing full mosaic. And there's something interesting that you can do here. I mean there's tons of things that you can play around with texture within each little square. If you took my modern watercolor techniques class and you did all the little experiments with the planets, imagine having different sections, playing around with salt texture or having maybe mixing in different types of paints and creating fun textures like within these little shapes, tons of things you can do if you just experiment and expand a little bit out of what I'm showing you here. Something that I am thinking of just now is that maybe we can do within this larger area that I'm going to fill in with these darker shapes. May be I can also mix a little bit of colors within each shape or just drop some paint into a puddle of water. Then I'm going to just grab some of my clean water here, and we'll do that now. And mix a few of these into my background. You can see that this is just clear water here. I'm painting into a shape, you'd need to sort of move your head to a certain angle that you can see where the water is. And I'm going to grab a little bit of indigo and some of the blues that I've been using, and just drop some paint in there like this. I'm going to let that dry. This is a really fun way to add texture within all of your little mosaic shapes, and that's something that I just thought of right now for this. In the original large story piece that I showed you, I had some gold paint within some of the mosaics too, that's also a fun thing to do. So See here it's really fun because I'm starting to play with the shape, and things are starting to fit in together so I move from this edge down to this edge and go up again, and then here I have this little star and I go down, and I mean it actually turns into a fun little game of having all the small shapes fit in with each other. And you can start mixing in a little bit different color. I have some of the indigo here I'm going to add it in here. I'm just filling the entire background with irregular shapes. Then I think it's a good time to comment on something here, which is just how to integrate different sections here. So a tip is, for example, if I have this wave here that's in this cascade green and it's like a midtone and the one that's bordering it is this wave here, this section right here. So what I want to do is make sure that this wave is in a different color theme or even a different value than the one that's right next to it, and that way we'll get a little contrast and we'll be able to recognize which one is which. 6. Final Project - Part 2: I've continued painting and painting and painting on my tiny little shapes, and my mosaics and now I'm at this point where I'm almost done. I'm just finishing a little patch here and a little smaller patch here, which I'll work on right now. I want to give you an idea of how long one of these pieces actually takes, between shooting, I actually took off and went on to paint the rest of the little shapes all in between. It took me about three days to work on all of this. So it's not a quick painting, it's not like a fast watercolor you're going to finish, it's a lot of repeat work. The very same thing that I showed you earlier in this video. I basically replicated this around and around and just filled in all the back area with the same color tone, and same thing here with the waves. I'm going to work on the final little squares here. Well basically these mosaic watercolors are so much fun and you can do really any kind of theme you want with them, which is my favorite part. I mean the possibilities are endless here. So I'm going to do one more of these, like these little guys here which I really enjoy doing and I'm going to repeat along the way many times. You don't have to do this is just something specific that I thought of for this one. You can also add it in like some gold paint or some sort of some texture. You can just really have fun with all these little shapes. Do your own thing here. I'm just sharing a technique with you. My favorite thing ever is to always see students who have specific themes that they are interested in and how they use these methods to work on their personal artwork, that's my favorite thing. Of course, you can do a similar piece like this, but it would make me really happy to see you come up with something unique on your own. I mean, you can do flowers, you can do even portraits. I've seen a student do a portrait. I'll also share what my students in Sicily did with this workshop because I think it's worth taking a look. I'm almost done here. I'm just finishing this last area. I want to make it pretty transparent because I have a darker color up here, and I want to make this pretty watery. So it's really important to play around with values, try not to get over saturated. That's how you're going to get that cool look where you'll be able to differentiate between different areas. Some areas might have more water than others, so it might be more opaque. This is a perfect example. See, this one is watery, this one is opaque. Recommended classes to take before this one are definitely modern watercolor techniques for beginners, especially because of the Polson precision work, and also the values work, the gradients and transparencies. All of that beginner work is fundamental for any of my classes. In this class here is meant to be more of a workshop where I give you an idea, and you see me work on it, and then you develop your own. I'm wrapping up here and I can't believe this is finally the last tiny shape that I'm painting in this large mosaic piece. It's very satisfying, and this is it. This is your final piece. The last thing to do is actually wait for this to dry completely and then you can go over with your eraser because I still have some pencil lines in here, and once you do that, the image looks super clean and crisp and it's going to look fantastic. I'll be back in a few seconds with that while this dries. Now everything is dried completely and I am free to erase all the little lines that are in between all the mosaics. This is something that's super important. Always make sure to have your small shapes be right next to your pencil and not paint over your pencil. Remember that pencil is really hard to erase once that watercolor has been painted over it, so be very mindful of this. As you can see here, my pencil lines are right in the small areas in between my little shapes. That's it. Viola. Were done. This is my mosaic painting, I did a story theme with an ocean. I'm coincidentally in my hometown of Cancun right now so this sort of felt very auspicious to paint. Remember that you are not only free but encouraged to paint a theme of your own that's totally different from this. All you need to know here is the guide, and practicing your mosaic shapes before you go into it. As you can see, we have a variety of these in here. For example, this little square one is the one that goes all around each star shape, the star that goes in here. These rectangles go here in a wavy style. This more irregular shape is the one that's all within the background. Something extra that I did was just I added a few just plain water shapes and then add a little bit of paint on it but there's so much more you can do here. You can also have this example here which was the original that I showed you and I think it's just a good extra commentary to finalize. This here is that I actually used a little bit of metallic paint, which you can see here. It's blended into the watercolor and that's just something extra, something fun that you can do. Here I'm using a lunar black which is a really fun to paint. Here I'm using the little square technique with gradients so it's basically a darker green with each little square turns lighter and lighter. Same here with the ocher. So it's really about using your imagination letting this fly and just having fun with the small little shapes. It's going to be super therapeutic. I think you're going to enjoy doing this. I can't wait to see your projects, I'm sure you guys are going to come up with amazing things as always, and thank you so much for taking the sculpture class.