Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, My name is Monica, and I'm a freelance artist living in upstate New York worked in many mediums in the past, from charcoal and pastel to acrylics in oil and now, watercolor. I've had fun creating street paintings, murals, private commissions and pretty much anything in between. A new passion is watercolor, and this class will show you a relaxing way to apply watercolor techniques to create whimsical patchwork art that involves no drawing experience. This style of painting incorporates the look of a patchwork quote with the spontaneity and beauty of watercolor, which actually evolved from working alongside my mother in the Etsy shop run. She's 1/4 and I'm a painter. Since I'm better at painting than sewing, this is my version of a quote on paper. This class is perfect for beginners because will only be painting basic shapes. But at the end you're left with a finished piece of art, and you'll have some practice under your belt, which also makes this class fund for those already familiar with water colors. In this class will talk about the supplies you'll need. I'll show you some examples of my work in This style will go over sketching out your design on grid paper. Do some fun exercises where you can experiment with the watercolor, and we'll also talk a little bit about color theory. For the final project, you'll choose a fruit that you'd like to paint and design a piece with. Three different variations of that fruit will do a little lettering, and by the end of the class you'll have a finished piece to hang in your kitchen or give us a gift. This class will leave you with a no pressure way to practice your watercolor techniques that evolves. No drawing but leaves you with a fun piece of artwork at the end. I can't wait to see you in class, so let's get started.
2. Supplies: Okay, so now we're gonna talk about what you'll need for this class, and we'll start off with the easy stuff that everybody probably already has. Obviously, you need a pencil. I would recommend something that's a little bit harder of the lead, like an h. Ah. You can also use, um, an HB or to age something hard when you start getting into the bees to be is okay, that's a normal, um, kind of a writing pencil for school. That will be fine. But if you start getting any darker than that, like four B or a six B, those leads get ah, really soft. And usually what happens then, after you've drawn something on your paper, you start to smear it at least ideo and then you're left to the big mass. And so the harder pencils kind of avoid that. So that's usually what I start off with. Um, you also need some grid paper. I have this little bitty book. They're available just about in every store that sells crafting materials because lettering is so big right now. And that's typically what the's air used for. Ah, we're going to take our grid paper and that's where we're gonna kind of flush out are designed so that, you know, um, where you're gonna place everything on the paper and how big your actual object is going to be. And it's nice to be able to work on this before you actually commit to paper your watercolor paper, so you'll need the grid paper. Angelos need a pencil? You'll need a ruler, most definitely. So we can make our own grid. I did want to mention to that if you don't have grid paper or a grid book like this, you can use any grid paper. Um, this is just to make things like I said a little bit easier so that you can count the squares. There are also websites that you can go to that you can specify how big you actually want the square so you can specify quarter of an inch or half inch, and it will allow you to print the grid paper out on your printer so you can do it that way , too. And I'll make sure that I leave ah link in the about section of the class that you can access. That is a resource if you need it. So we did the ruler in the pencil. In the grid paper. You'll need an eraser. At least ideo I might go to a racer has always been a kneaded eraser. Um, any time a grab something else, like one of thes I usually throw it to the side and end up picking up my kneaded eraser. So it's just a personal preference, Really. I know that some people like the, um the white plastic erasers and I got I've got a chunk of one. Usually I will, um, taken a racer like this and take my knife if I'm doing some sort of kind of really super detailed work and I'll carve it into a little wedge so that I can get a nice, sharp shape so that I can erase specific things. Like I said, it's just really a personal preference. I always use a kneaded eraser, so ah, you will need water. And I I always had these little Mason jars and about these really cute little lives. I did want to say to, um my desk is really messy, and this has been cleaned, by the way. But this is years of, um, Sears of gunk and art on this desk. And, um, I guess it's kind of like the wrinkles on your face, right? I earned those. So, uh, same thing with this desk. I guess I kind of learned all of the's marks that are on there, so, um, I hope it's not too distracting. It shouldn't be once we get into painting. Um, the next thing that I want to talk about Oh, you'll need paper towels. Paper towels, obviously, since we're doing watercolor, um, and paper. I didn't want to talk about paper. Paper is usually ah, pretty big deal to everybody when it comes to watercolor. Um, this class is really supposed to be kind of a then kind of a practice. You don't have to know how to draw. This is about just getting your brush to the paper. And, um, unless you're using something that's really, really cheap, that's gonna cause frustration. Ah, I wouldn't use it then. Ah, spend a little bit more on your paper then. But you don't. You don't have to buy an expensive brand of paper. This is some of the stuff that I use. I've had really good results. Um, this is cold press. I never go any less than £140 this is nine by 12. And that's what I would recommend that you get is about a nine by 12 sheet, because our ruler that were using standard sizes obviously 12 inches. You don't want to go any bigger than nine by 12 paper because then you're gonna have some difficulty with your ruler obviously reaching to the end of the paper. Um, you can go a little bit smaller. I wouldn't go too small unless you're practicing just because you want some room to work. And, um, you don't want your compositions to be, like super tight on the page. Um, big sheet of paper is always a little bit better, so nine by 12 is good. Skansen is another, um, type of paper that I've used. Spiral bound is good. You can just flip flip your sheets. Um, which I like, because I'm not a big fan of having to tear out my paper and tape it to a piece of cardboard. Let's say so that it doesn't buckle. Um, we're probably not gonna experience a lot of buckling because we're going to be working on painting little squares. So you're not going to be using a lot of water, um, in one specific area. So we'll be moving around the page, and, uh, I don't think you're going to get a whole lot of buckling, but you can use There's another cancer in Excel and then you have some Ah, Carell Oh, artistic over made by Fabbiano. And this is a hot press and it's £140. Um, I have done some stuff. I really like hot press paper. More for any paintings that I do that are a little bit, um, less illustrative. Maybe I would suggest maybe staying with the cold press paper for this class. Um, and I also wanted to show you this. I picked this up, actually, at Michael's. I think it was $5 for this, and it's just a little block, and it's six by nine, which isn't a bad size. So if you wanted to do your exercises on something smaller, you definitely can, um, I think that this is a great size to throw in your purse if you're taking it somewhere and you just want to practice watercolor. Um I mean, it's not super high quality, but, um, it kind of gets the job done. And like I said, if you just want a practice or sketch something out, um, or test out your watercolors. This is good paper to do that on. So, um, I would recommend though the nine by 12 paper and get the best that you can afford. Don't go super crazy. Middle of the roads always kind of my philosophy. I don't want super cheap and I don't want super expensive Ah, a lot of people buy something super expensive, and then they're afraid to use it. And it sits in a corner. So by something that you're comfortable with and, ah, have no fear. As's faras painting goes, that's what this class is about. Definitely getting the brush to the paper and experimenting with watercolor. That's that's what we're doing here. So, um, the next thing I wanted to talk about our brushes and as kind of another personal preference, I think, um, a lot of people think that they have to use really expensive brushes in order to create something beautiful, and that's just not so you do want to make sure that you have brushes that are of quality. Ah, they can be on the lower end and still be a quality kind of a brush. Um, I've collected several different brands over the course of ah, a few years, especially taking classes in school. I have all different kinds of brands. They're all synthetic when you struck getting into the natural hair. That's when you get, um, you get into some serious money. This is a number two. This is a silver black velvet. This is a really good brush like this. The watercolor brush. Um, I also have this sapphire Robert Robert Simmons, and it's a number four and that thes two. And probably, um, I usually don't go to small when I'm painting in squares. Um, but I probably this is also a number two, Um, and I'll probably just play play around between these two to see which one I like the best . I have been using this one a lot, but this this one is a Princeton Neptune, and these a really good brushes, too. And it's a size two, and this is a grump pucker, and it's a round brush, and it's this high six And this is what will be using to paint. Um, are larger square, so you obviously want larger brush for a larger shape. Um, the nice thing about watercolor brushes is that they're designed to hold water and pigment . Um, and it can be frustrating when you constantly have to go back to your palate to get water or pigment to paint because your brush won't hold any. Um, So, like I said, it's a personal preference. You don't have to go wild. Um, you can get a decent brush for 10 bucks. You know, anywhere between seven and 10 bucks, you can get a decent brush. Um, but like I said, this this class is just about getting the brush to the paper and playing around with watercolor and getting rid of any fear that that you might have. Um, next. And here comes my dog, Thai 30. Yeah. Okay, so now that the dog is in the room, um, I think we can move on. Right. So next thing I wanted to talk about and this is usually the big thing is water color, So I have ah, several different brands. Uh, my favorite right now is Daniel Smith and I've also got some Cinelli A's. I did want toe show you, though, that I don't really work out of the tube. Um, what I've done is I created my own palette, So this thing is kind of big, and I'm not a big fan, really? Of plastic working on plastic. Um, I prefer to use, uh, little porcelain dishes just because when you use watercolor on plastic, you can see that I dio I mean, I don't let it stop me, but it beats up and, um, usually have to put a bunch of water on there. But what I've done is I've taken my Daniel Smith colors and these air all the tubes that I own. And I was able to make a palette for myself, An appellate for my mother. And this is about how much I've used. So it becomes a really good investment when you can put the pain in the palate, let it dry and use these. They dry really nice. They're not sticky or anything on. Then I can take him with me, even though this thing is big. Um, I could make smaller palettes, so I also have some Cinelli A's. Ah, these are a little bit more expensive. Um, I used the's a lot in school, and we used a very basic palette, and I also took thes and I created ah, separate palette. And these are just basically your primaries and thes air. Not as great for creating palette. I made this palette a long time ago, and they're still sticky, but you have a cool in a warm yellow Colin, A warm red. Um, and I threw an extra one in there because I had it, um, and same thing with your blues. And then I've got a black over here. You can make any color when you have your primaries, especially if you have a warm and cool version of each and we'll talk a little bit. Um, about color theory later on in the class just will go over some basic kind of pointers. Ah, I also have, um, pH Martin's fine art hydrates watercolors. Thes Really vibrant. Um, I haven't been using these a whole lot lately. Have been using these. Daniel Smith's uh, I also have some of these made by prima. This is the tropical pan set, and I have several of these. And, um, I actually really like them. I think they're fun to work with. And, um, the colors are great, and you can actually pop these out. And you can make your own little palate if that's what you want to do. If you've got colors that are your favorite. And I've also got some of these Jane Davenport, I love her and she makes some really, really fun pallets. And I absolutely love the names, you know, Ladybug, butterfly, seventies eyeshadow, mermaid fairy tale. You can't go wrong. Ah, and you can see I've used the's ton too. So it doesn't really, um it doesn't really matter. I I don't think what you use as long as, ah, maybe you're one step above a set of cradle of ah watercolor set. But if that's all you've got to and you want to play around, why not? I've also got this was my go to palette for a long, long time. I need to replace some of the pants, but this is a Yarkas, ST Petersburg said, And this is a decent set. I think this runs about $72. Um, which is a lot less expensive than this or some of the other brands, but it's a quality said. And like I said, I've used it for a really long time. It's been like kind of like a workhorse watercolor palette for me. So whatever you have, I think, um, we'll work with what we're doing because this is kind of Ah, a simplistic approach to water colors. And we're not going to be painting anything so fantastically outrageous that you won't be able to keep up with whatever kind of watercolor set that you have. Uh, I did want to mention also that you may want to get, um, maybe a gel pen we will be talking about embellishing are, um and I can show you some. We'll talk about embellishing what we're painting later in the class. So, like, this is a pineapple that I did and ast faras detail ing. I didn't go too crazy. Um, I just added a couple little things there in a couple of little a little bit of texture there. But that's kind of what what we're going to be doing. And, um, you don't have to worry about drawing at all. This class is free from any drawing And, uh, we're gonna talk about our project in the next section and how we're going to grit out our paper and I will see you them.
3. Grid It Out: Okay, so now we're going to talk a little bit about the final project, and we're going to start also gritting out our paper for our exercise and for the final project. So the final project. Well, look, something like this. The lettering is optional, obviously. Ah, we're gonna concentrate mostly on painting a fruit. So we're gonna pick one fruit, or you're gonna pick one fruit, or it could be a vegetable. We're gonna concentrate mainly on simple shapes. So if you pick out a simple fruit like an apple, maybe something Citrus, like an orange lemon or align, we're going to paint it in three different stages. Now, the stage is don't have to change shape like they are in this one. You can paint something that, um if you wanted to do an apple, you could paint the same apple, but painted in three different colors, like three different apples. Um, I've done something like this, and I also was playing around with different shapes, like this apple. So a whole apple of wedge and then the cross section so you could take this same idea and you could apply it to a Citrus piece of fruit so you would have, let's say in a whole orange, the wedge of an orange and a cross section. So feel free to kind of think about this as you're working on your exercise. That way, as you're painting your squares in your exercise, you can be concentrating on maybe the color palette that your planning on using and you can play around with values. And we're also gonna talk about, um, applying some little details like this on top of, um on top of your final project piece. So this is what your exercises going toe look like. So I've divided off my page in, um, this is a little bit more than half of the page, the half inch squares. What I would recommend is, uh, probably a little bit less on the half inch square. So you probably want toe graph out 2/3 of the page or 3/4 of the page and one inch blocks simply because the bigger the block is, the easier it is to paint. Once you get a feel for it, then you can move over to the half inch. We're going to be practicing these one inch blocks and, uh, will move into the half inch blocks, which is what the project will be painted in. Start graphing out some paper or gritting out some paper, not graphing. So I've got my trusty ruler here, and I always but this up to the bottom of my page. Um, just so that I always have a clear kind of a landmark is not all of my paper has a preparation at the top, So I'm just gonna go around the page, and I think that I want about I don't know, 2/3 of the page. I'm going to start like here, and I'm gonna bring this down here. And that was at this seven. I can kind of flip this around so that I know what I'm doing. So I'm gonna make a line right here just so that I don't waste all of my time making half inch marks all the way around the paper. So this side of my page will be the one inch blocks and over here will be half inch bucks. So I'll still but this up to the bottom of the page. And I'll know to stop when I get to that line and we'll start making these little tick marks and I do this all the way around the page. I'm not very good at eye balling straight lines. Um, if you have a quicker way that you do this and can get straight lines, then by all means do it. So I This is my line where I'm going to stop the half inch and start the one inch blocks, and that's that. We're going to do the same thing down here. I mean, about the ruler up against the bottom of the page, like you did on the other side. And I am going to do the same thing. Okay, so across the top, I'm butting my ruler up to the left side of the page. Always try to, but it up to the same side of the page. Um, across the top, we're going to do We're gonna just do half inch tick marks all the way, and we'll know when we're drawing our lines. You could do one side of the page and then do the other side of the page so that you don't have to do a bunch of a racing of lines, that kind of thing So look this around. I'm gonna put this up to the hope you can see that, but this up to the bottom of the page, and I'm gonna make it. Like I said, half inch tick marks. Okay, so we have our piece of paper that's been granted out for our exercise. And I'll see you in the next video where we start talking about applying paint to the paper .
4. Exercise: Okay, so now we're going to head into our exercise, and our exercise is going to be about just getting the paint on the paper and playing around with, um, the colors that we plan on using. And you don't have to stick to your palate for your final project. You can play around with whatever colors you've got. Ah, you can also try color mixing. We're going, Teoh, talk about values a little bit when you are painting with water color and using a watercolor brush Watercolor brushes, air designed to hold water. So make sure that you have plenty of water on your palate and that you have your brush loaded. Don't wipe your brush off like this and then go to your paper. Ah, that was a habit that I had to get out of when I first started painting in watercolor. I had painted in oils and acrylics and, um, having a lot of paint on your brush when you're painting in acrylic or oil. Um, is not super Ben officials. Ho, um, watercolors kind of the opposite. You can wipe it a little bit on the rim of your, um, your glass here, your water glass or jar, Or maybe just touch it to the, um, paper towel. But be mindful you want you wanna have water in your brush and you want water on your palate and you're going to increase or decrease the value. And when I talk about value, I mean the lightness or the darkness of the same. It's the same color. It's just it. This is really light, and this is a really dark version of the color. You can create some really nice effects if you understand, um, your value scale. So right now we're going to get a lot of water on the palate, and you can also invest in one of these little bottles. These air Great. It saves sometimes faras getting water down on the palate. So I've got a decent puddle, and the more water that I have down on my palette, um, the water to paint ratio is what determines your value. So I'm going to start off with this, and I have plenty of water and paint on my brush and I'll start painting. I'm gonna make sure that I'm not anywhere near ah block that's already wet, because what happens is water follows water. And if I were to paint and I know this edge is still wet, If I were to paint next to this, it would bleed right in and would jump right into that square. So I want to let that dry first. So when you're painting, you can get used to skipping around because you want your other blocks to dry. You're doing the same thing in your project. You're not gonna paint right next to, ah, wet square. So we'll start somewhere over here, and this is going to be a pretty light value of that orange color that I have on my palette . And as you can see, I'm not outlining my square. I'm kind of painting this shape. I'm gonna get a little bit more. You wanna have a nice wet edge to, but don't outline your shape. And the reason for that is that, um, if for some reason and these squares air fairly small, so you probably wouldn't have to worry about it. But as you move onto painting bigger objects, if you outline your shapes, those those edges will dry first before you can get to filling them in and then you'll have dried outline, which will be really obvious. And you don't want to do that. Um, basically, what you're doing, you're pushing a puddle of paint around. That's how I feel when I paint. And as I come to the corners and I want, um, straight lines, I try to hold my brush a little bit more perpendicular to the page so that I can get kind of a nice, um, sharp corner. As you're painting this and we start working on the smaller squares, you're going to lose some of the sharpness. Ah, and you're going to have edges but up against next to each other, and they will create a darker edge. And that's perfectly fine, because this is supposed to be kind of a whimsical look anyway. And it's an illustration. And, um, imperfection is is just part of the process. We don't need Teoh be super perfect with this. This is more about practice. So as you can see, this has ah lot of water, a lot of water in it. There is some pigment in it, but it's a nice light value. So if I decide that maybe my next square I want to be darker in value. Then I'm going to pick up some more paint, and I'm going to drop it into that puddle. And if you do it on maybe half the puddle, I try to keep them kind of away from each other a little bit that way. I've still got my my deluded puddle over here. So if I want to go back to it, I can. It's a simple is adding more water over here if I If I lose some of this saturated poppel over here? So this is the same color. It's just a really dark value of the same color. And like I said, we're just, um we're pushing paint, pushing a pink puddle around and pushing it up next to the edge and into the corner. And something else that you want to be aware of also is, ah, where you place your hand. I don't have to worry about anything because I haven't painted over here. Yup, but be mindful of where you're resting your hand. You can also kind of, um, use your pinky is a little bit of ah rest. And that way you don't have your whole hand resting on the paper. I've stuck my hand and ruined many of painting That way it's not ruined. Usually can go back over it. So there's a Lifelock. There's probably a middle value block, and I can pick up even more paint and, um, drop it in right over here. And this has the least amount of water. This has some water, and this has a lot of water. So let's try this one, and we'll see just how dark this one is. Now, I'm going toe have to go into that puddle probably a couple few times just because there isn't a lot of water. And I want to make sure that I don't end up Ah, dry brushing anything. So I'm gonna go back and pick some more up. And that should that should be enough for me to paint the rest of this square. Got enough of a puddle going on here. Um, when, As you can see, this is not a perfect thing. It will definitely help you when you move over here to the smaller block. So? So if I want to maybe do something like this, try this out. What? This be one of your, um, practice squares, and I've got a little bit of yellow still. Um, just probably from the tinted water. But I'm gonna paint water right in the square, just like I would if it were paint. And like I said, you can see this. It's not clear water. Okay, So I wouldn't recommend doing the entire your entire project. What? And went like this. You don't want your paper to, um, tobacco, but it is fun to try. Um, and so I'm going to pick up a different color. I think I might. I try this This is kind of like an earthy, an earthy red believe it's a Venetian red, but I'm just gonna pick up the paint right off of the pan. I'm not gonna mix it in any water. I'm going to let the water on the paper dilute this. Now I can stop right there and kind of tip my paper and let this do what it wants to do. And you can see I've got a lot of water down here. And if I were to tip this probably anymore, that water would come flooding out. And if I want to get rid of some of that if I think I've got too much water on my page, take your brush and dry it off on your paper towel completely. And make sure that you run it, um, sideways down the paper towel. Don't ever go like this. You'll you'll ruin the shape of your brush. Make sure it's dry and just kind of stick the tip of your paintbrush into that water and suck up some of that water. Dry it off again. Suck up some of that water and you just kind of keep repeating the process if you think you've got too much water on there and I can still I can push this pain around my brushes dry really dry right now. And I want to push this all the way down to meet the edge of the other square. And you can see I bobbled a little bit right here. Went right out of the square with my water. And that's really not a big deal, either, because if I make a mistake like that, what I would do is I would wait until this dries completely and then I would take a wet brush and ah, what this edge kind of the best that I could dry it off, um, and pick up some of the paint like that, or I would dab it with a paper towel. So something else that you can try when you're painting, you can go in here and pick up a color. And I'm going to spend my paper around because this is wet over here and I want to paint over here, and I will lay my hand into it. So feel free. Don't feel like you have to keep your paper in the same position. You can change it around and flip it upside down whatever is most comfortable. So I'm just picking up some paint from this puddle that I've already got down and I'm gonna paint Mm, about half of the block, and then I'm gonna pick up another. I'm gonna pick up another color. So I am going to start a puddle little puddle over here with some read and some pink in it . Maybe and make sure that I've got enough water down, and then I'm just gonna I'm gonna start painting, and I'm gonna pretend like it's the same color and I'll pick up some more red and you could just let thes blend. You can let thes blend right on the page. You can even pick up some of your red, and you can drop it in over here. Now, if you're a person that likes to so or ah, you really like fabric, You work with fabric at all. Uh, there are some really cool fabrics out there. Um, one of them is called batik, and that's what this reminds me of. And watercolor is, like, perfect to achieve that same kind of effect as batik fabric. Um, we can move on to different colors, too. So I know that I'm gonna be painting. I'm gonna be painting a leaf, a swell on my orange And maybe I want I'm gonna add some yellow and some green. And when I work with yellow, um, I usually like to wipe a spot off on my palette because yellow can muddy obviously really easily. Um, so got some yellow down, and I want it. I want to play around with what happens if I paint my leaf. I'm gonna pay my leaf yellow, and then I'm gonna drop in. I'm going to drop in some green. I want to see what that would look like before I'm actually on, um, before it actually painting on my good paper so I'll clean my brush, I'm going to pick up some green. And this is a really dark green, too. So, um, let's see what happens, what this looks like. And I'm really just kind of dropping it in off my brush. I didn't really I put a little bit of water with this. I went to my palette mixed in a little bit of water, but it's a very, um, non diluted. Its more paint than there is water. Because I know that once I go into this wet square, if I've got a super diluted puddle of green and I go into this square that it's going to, it's already got water on it, it's going to dilute it even more so that's something else that you can try. So if you lay down a color and this is a really cool color, this is Cascade Green, and this is, uh, this is Daniel Smith and it granule eight. And if you use distilled water when you're painting with ease on the on the paints that do have granule ation. It will do so even it's an even stronger effect. So So I'm gonna paint this and I'm gonna clean my brush, and I'm gonna leave it full of water. And then I'm going to drop water, clean my brush a little bit and maybe one right here, and what happens is the water is pushing the pigment away, and then just leave it alone and let it dry. Some other things that you can try our, um when it's especially wet, you can try adding Cem Sultan, and it kind of has the same effect as dropping dropping water in. Uh, we'll drop some in here. You just have to make sure that it's wet. And so right after you paint a block drop in your salt, let it dry completely before you try brushing the salt away. Um, I have I've made the mistake of not letting it dry completely, and you can't really. Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's dry brushing it and then smearing pain all over my paper. So, um, it's usually a hard lesson word, but, um, that's why I'm telling you now so you can hit it with a blow dryer. If you want. Make it dry a little bit quicker. Walk away from it, give yourself a break or you can start on your smaller squares if you'd like. And what I'm going to dio is I have this number two silver black velvet and I'm going to start painting. And I think I want to start maybe with some blue I make myself a nice little puddle of blue right here. And obviously, the smaller the brushes and you can see it Got a drop of water hanging off the end and kind . Just give it a shake over the paper towel so it doesn't drip on the paper when I'm painting . Um, obviously, the smaller the brush, the less water it's gonna hold just because it's smaller and same idea. You're kind of gonna paint this in in more of segments than you are, um, outlining and filling in. And then I end up picking up more a little bit more pigment water just so I have something to push along the shape. And like I said, that's essentially what you're doing. You're pushing a puddle around the paper. So after you've played around on the bigger blocks and you develop a little bit of confidence with your water color going into the smaller squares and, um, maybe adding you're drops of water into it. You won't feel, uh, intimidated by the smaller blocks once you've painted all of your blocks. And once these are dry, the next thing that you can dio we can start to embellish the's blocks a little bit and you can use. I have ah, white Joe Penn made by unit ball. It's a signal, and you can also use. You can use watercolor, or you can use micron pens. And I have, um, several. The nice thing about Micron Prep pens are that they are waterproof and they are acid free. Least, I believe yes, they are waterproof. Just make sure that the dry first before if you end up putting Phew. Let's say that you, um, end up putting something like this down, and, um, we'll do some leaves here. No, quick. If you end up putting something like this down and then you decide Well, you know, I think I want to go back over this, um, square with a little bit of water color. I don't really like the color. Make sure that this is dry. First, make sure that you're Micron Pen is dry first, and then you can most definitely go over this again with watercolor. Not so much with the gel pen with your gel pen. Um, and there we go with the hand in the paint. So, um, like I said, be mindful of where your wet paint is so we can do stuff like polka dots and there's a face . It's kind of weird. So Ah, good place for inspiration is to look at fabric. Go to your local craft store or Joan's, Um, look around online and we can vary the dots here, something else that you can do that's a lot of fun when you have all of your squares and I'm gonna flip this around again so I don't do what I just did when you have all of your squares painted, go in between. And if you like the look of something being sown since what we're doing is based off of quoting, you can put in little stitch marks, and I don't think you're going to be able to see this really. In the white, there's a couples try this in the black since we're working up against the light color. But you can put in some little stitch marks. That would be really cute and see if it'll work on top of the Joe open. You get the idea, though you can even do this in if I didn't want to use black because the black is kind of hard against the, um, against the yellow. Maybe what I would do is I would pick up a little bit of a darker shade of yellow and and I think I'm going to use a smaller brush for that. You can do all of your detailed work with, um, I think this is ah one. I'm not sure. No, this is a size zero, actually found it. So you can also do this with, like I said, Ah, drunker value of the same color. Or you could just pick a different color completely, and you can make your stitches like this and just totally go around the around the square. So that's what this exercise is about. It's about experimenting. It's about adding water into, um, your squares. It's about adding another color in detail ing on top go online and go on Pinterest, take a look at, um, patterned fabric. Whoever you want. Teoh, embellish and detail out your squares. This is all totally up to you and play around with your color palette. Try doing a really light square and then try doing a really dark square of the same color. Just don't add as much water into your puddle. This is about experimentation and having a general idea of what you want to do with your final project and the colors that you want to use. Move on to your smaller squares when you feel like you've had enough of the big ones, and you can detail these out to at the end. So in the next segment, we're going to talk a little bit about how to design your final project on your grid paper .
5. Design Your Project: Okay, so now we're going to start talking about designing your piece for your final project on your grid paper. And what I did is I went ahead and I went to the website that I was telling you about, that I would leave a link for and who printed out some, um, some grid paper just so that it's bigger and you can see what I'm doing. I decided, like I said earlier, that I was going to do an orange and I'll show you what I've done so far. I thought about doing it. Lemon, um, we had talked about a pumpkin, I think earlier, um, and I was just playing around with some general ideas, and then I decided that I would go ahead and stick to the orange and I'm going to stick with a basic shape for for my orange the, um, As you can see, this is the how it's gonna be laid out on my page. So I'll have the whole orange, and then I'm going to have an orange wedge, and then this piece over here, this will be the cross section of an orange. And I was playing around with how we wanted it to look, and I kind of like this better. So what I normally do is I start off with just picking my fruit. And like I said, I decided on an orange. So I want to figure out what my orange is going to look like. So I start off with, um, the first basic shape and obviously in oranges round. So we're gonna do something super basic, and I know and I you know, this is super sloppy, and it's supposed to be because you're just kind of working things out at this point. So I know that I want a round shape and in, ah, grid land, that's not gonna be super around. It's going to be a geometric shape. But as you can see, I'm making this, um, the same on all sides. So I've got three blocks here, and I'm kind of paying attention to this as I'm going around and I go diagonal to on each side. And then I know I've got three blocks of here, so I'm gonna go three blocks down. Families do the two diagonal in when I've got three bucks, two diagonals and three blocks. So that's going to be my orange. I did play around. You can see that here I did play around with a shape that on Lee went diagonal once in the corners and that looks more like a, um, looks more like a square to me. So going diagonal down and up across two squares gives it more of around it kind of a shape . And if you kind of if you're working on this and you feel kind of stumped, you can always go online and, um, Google, like fruit patchwork squares, quote squares. Ah, something more specific. You could do strawberry patchwork quilt squares and it will spit back a lot of different designs. Just make sure that you aren't directly copying somebody else's. This is supposed to be your your design. So try to use your grid paper to your advantage to design your own piece of art. Um, just use your anything that you find online as a reference Don't copy directly. So we're gonna move on. So I know that this is my basic shape of my orange. I also want I think on my, um on my first orange, I want tohave a stem, and I know I want to have a leaf. And since I don't have enough room over here to add a stem Italy final, flip my paper around since it's the same on all the same sides, and I'm going to add in my leaf over here now, there are different shapes that you can use. Um, and that could be something else that you play around with, you know, how do you want your leaf toe look? Maybe. Ah, you go diagonal this way. And like this, and like this, Maybe that's what a leaf looks like. Or that kind of looks like a could be a lemon too, you know, So maybe write that down, keep that in the back. Your mind. You could always make um, make this a little bit flatter on one end anyway, so this could be a leaf. You can do something. It's a little bit wider. You know, maybe we would have these go in, so play around with different shapes for this one. I am going to start here, and I'm gonna go up diagonally, and then I'm gonna go across, and I'm going to have this leaf like rest right on top. of the orange. I'm gonna go up diagonally here and down like this. And when I get to the part where I'm embellishing and I'll probably add some paint across here like this and probably put instant details like this, I can have my stem over here and this kind of stuff where I'm adding in the stem. If I wanted to be fairly centered, I would just eyeball it and put it in and use my straight lines as a guide. I think I'm gonna. But it right up against this leaf, though I think that's how I'm gonna do it. So there's my first. There's my first shape of my whole composition. I know already that I'm doing the whole lemon. I'm doing a wedge and I'm doing a cross section. So there's the 1st 1 and what you might want to do is note how many squares you're actually taking up. So this one is one too. 12345 Make sure that your accounting out the widest part notice what I just did. So 1234567 I can count so seven across at the widest part and make sure that you're measuring from the tallest part also. So 1234678 and nine. So I know that this is nine. So I'll move on to the wedge. And if I one way to look at this too, is if I look at this orange, I can already see a wedge. So there won't be a lot for me to figure out, because if I just take and draw an imaginary line right here, can't you see a wedge? Right Right here. So there's not a lot of figuring to dio, but I'll draw it out anyway on a separate piece just so that I can count how many blocks I'm using. So I know I've got three at the bottom, so we will start, We'll start over here and I've got three on the bottom. That's the base. And I know that I'm going to go diagonally up across two blocks and I'm gonna go across two over here. I'm gonna go up one on either side and then I'm going to go all the way across. Don't worry about any of the details yet on the inside, like creating the the rind and the wedges will worry about that later. Right now, we're just concerned with, um, mapping out our actual shapes and, um, making a note of how tall and how wide they are. So 1234567 So seven across. And this one is only three high. Okay, we don't have to figure the last one, because the last one I decided was going to be a cross section. So I will keep this basic shape minus stem and a leaf since we're doing only a cross section. So I already know that I've got this three across here. I go down diagonally to to go another three on each side. Okay? Again. Like I said, I'm not worried about the details. Um, right now, I'm just kind of counting out blocks so that we can get situated on our, um, undergrad paper. So we already know what this is because we've already counted it out. We know what seven across. We're not doing the stem or the leaf, so we have to, um, make sure that we count how high? So 1234567 So we've got seven this way. Okay, So now we have to think about laying this out on our watercolor paper. And I'm not going to use this even though this is a big and you can see it really well, I don't have enough squares for it to kind of mimic my watercolor paper, and I'll show you what I mean by that. So with our watercolor paper, I'm working on a nine by 12 a sheet of paper, and I'm using half inch square. So I know that, um, my my 12 squares, because they're broken down into half inch, is actually, um, equates to 24 squares and the the nine inches going this way because they're half inch squares. It's actually 18 squares and 24 squares. So what I would do is I would count this out. Ah, 123 Make a 1234567 89 10 11 12. So there's 24 and I usually do something like this. And then countdown 18. 1234567 10 11 12 13 14. Okay, I'll make a little mark there. Go all the way across and Okay, so this is a representation of my actual watercolor paper. And these little bitty blocks are my half inch squares. Okay, so now we have our, um a replication, a replica of our watercolor paper laid out and feel, Frito, draw your lines. And if if, ah, that helps you. Um, So what we're gonna do next is we're going to take the other sheets. Were we counted out? How many squares will be using up across the page and we're gonna plot them out on this. So if I go back and I look, I know that my, um my orange is seven across, and I know that my middle piece, my wedges also seven across and the final orange, the cross section is also seven across. So when I was figuring this out earlier, I decided that what I would dio is add in two spaces in between each of the different variations of the orange. But when I added all of this up, and I'm sure you can see it when you're looking at this Ah, seven times three is 21 plus another four. That's 25 squares across that I need. And this is why we plot this out first before we actually draw this on the watercolor paper . It avoids a lot of erasing. So, um, my paper only has 24 blocks, not 25. So what I had to do is I reduced the space in between these two by one, which actually means I only need 23 blocks to go. Um, to put this composition in. Now I know that I wanted it centered on the page. But if you look at, if you look at our piece of paper and if we want it centered, we've got to take that one block and split it on either side of the composition. And if that's the case, I would have to draw a line halfway through our first settle blocks. Which means that would be my starting point, the halfway point between two blocks. And I don't want to do that. That just makes everything super complicated. And, ah, I think what I'll do since I've got that one block leftover instead of splitting it between the two sides, I'm just going to start one block in from the left. So I know that's where my composition will begin this one block in. So since we've done that now to center it, um, this way on the page, then we need to do the same thing to center it the other way on the page. And we've talked about this a couple few times. We know that that first orange with the leaf on the top, that's going to be the tallest because the other two, um, are shorter. So we know we have nine blocks that we need to account for with the height. So we're going to do the same thing, so we'll take 18 minus nine, which is nine. And we need to split that between the top and the bottom so that our composition sits in the middle of the page. Well, I already know, right? It's 4.5, and when you start getting into the halfs, you're talking about splitting a block and 1/2 and starting your composition on a on 1/2 line, and we don't want to do that either. So I think what I'll dio, since I'm not worried about any lettering that I need to add in, and if you do have lettering that you want to add in, you're going to have to account for that in the height. But I know that, like I said, I'm not going to split. I'm not going to start my composition on ah, half block. So I think what I'll do is I will start. I'm going to use four and five. As long as they add up to nine, I think I'll start my composition. 1234 five They go started. Five down and 1234 up. So this is about where it will start an end. So this is where it will sit. I'm gonna put this down on the desk so you can kind of see you get this mapped out. So this is where it will sit on the page on. This is my whole page right here. So even though it may not be perfectly centred horizontally because we're starting in one block, that's fine. I do want to show you, though what it looks like all mapped out, so this isn't completely mapped out. Um, I did think about maybe possibly putting in some lettering. And when I noticed the space here that I have in between these two, I think the lettering might fit nicely right above this wedge. But what I did, I went ahead and map this all out. I drew in everything, just like we did before. I accounted for my one space in between. And then I added the details in here because I want to get a good feel for how this is going to work and how I'm going to draw this out before I take this onto my watercolor paper. So with the wedge, it's very simple. And I use the same concept over here on the cross section of the orange. I just added a little half circle right here. I added a whole circle here, and then I took lines. I used my squares as a guide, the diagonals on my squares or appear. I created lines like this kind of like cutting a pie. And from these lines, I created my wedge. So this line represents the middle of a wedge, and this becomes the side. And I did make the outside edge of Ah, these wedges that kind of made him a little round. Just because we're working on grid paper doesn't mean that everything has to be, um, super geometric. You don't have to work in straight lines on Lee. You really don't. Especially when you are working on the inside and your detail ing everything out, uh, feel free to toe add some curved lines. I think it makes, um, a really nice balance between the geometric, um, nature of this whole thing. Ah, and then you throw in some curve lines, and I just I think it looks really nice. So I did the same thing here a little bit of 1/2 circle. I did three lines rating out radiating out from that half circle. And use that as my guide for my wedges like this. And then I thought it looked a little bare up at the top. So I just added in a little half wedge and there, So I have now. Ah, plan before I go on to my actual watercolor paper. So what we'll do is we'll grid out our watercolor paper in half inch squares, and then you're going to count in and you're going to copy this exactly. And you have all of your numbers and everything. You know exactly what you're doing. Ah, and draw everything out. Don't draw it super dark on there. If you do Just go over it a little bit with your kneaded eraser. So what I'm gonna dio is I already know we talked about how we needed to go in one block from the side of my page. So I know that that is over here, which is easy and not counting anything, really. And I'm gonna make kind of the same little tick marks that I did, um, on my on my grid book over here so that it can kind of map out where I am. So I know the whole composition is going to be five blocks down from the top, and it's going to be four blocks up from the bottom, so I'll make sure that I annotate that like this, So I should have five above, and I should have four blocks below, so my composition will sit here, and it will start from one block in. So this is where we start putting the, um, actual, um, sketch onto the watercolor paper and I'm going to start obviously with the first orange and the easiest starting point for me. Um, I know for myself is to go do this bottom diagonal first, so you'll need your ruler once again, line up the two corners. Make sure your lineup east corners on your ruler. Make sure that your intersecting this middle one and there's my first diagonal. Now you can draw in. Since I've lost some of my lines on here, I I do plan on drawing, and you can use the tick marks that you made originally, I do plan on drawing in these grid lines that are already there. Like I said, I lost my lines. So I know this is three across on the bottom and I'm going to do the same thing and we know that this is a cross two blocks diagonally on. And I lost a little bit of that corner right there. And I'm gonna make sure that I go through like that when we know that each of the sides is three bucks tall. Was the only bad thing about working with the spiral bound book is that you have to kind of my roller up against that. No big deal. So three blocks of and another three blocks up on this side, I did lose my 123 Okay, we're going to go up they are Emily, too. Let's try that again. Make sure your pencils sharp as well. This isn't super sharp. You will get the idea, though, so that's a little bit better. Okay, so you're not going to erase any of your squares in here? Because that's what we're going to be painting. If you want to raise some of the lines on the outside of your composition, that's fine. I usually leave them in on Lee because, um, I might decide to add something in later, and then I can use the grid lines as a guide. So I'm gonna go ahead and I use my reference here that I have and I'm gonna put in my leaf . Now, if you feel more comfortable doing it like this, I'd like to use my ruler at least on the diagonals. Just because it's a little bit, um, it's a little bit neater, and for me, it's actually it's a lot neater. And if you want Teoh, um, you don't necessarily have to go over the actual straight lines. It's good to make them a little bit darker, I think, though, just so you know where you're going and you don't get you don't get a little lost when you're painting, and this is gonna be a diagonal as well Has a bit of a wonky diagonal. Okay? And I said that the stem I was just gonna kind of eyeball in. So just put a line here and go across like that. That will be my stuff on. And the next thing we're going to skip a space because we have a space in between each of these different elements, But we're going to use the same bottom line. That's where we're going to start. So I'm gonna skip a space. And I know that this wedge is going to have a diagonal here, and then it's gonna go up one here so I'll probably start with my diagonal, this corner through that corner down to the next. And I missed my intersection there a little bit, so that can do this again. That's a little bit better. And I'm gonna go across three, go up again, Okay? So just make sure your ruler is lined up through the the cross right here from corner to corner. That's better. And then we're gonna go up one, and I don't really need my ruler for that while I miss that completely. No wonder it's off. So I'm just going to read you that again. And it's mostly because I lost this line right here. So I'm gonna go ahead and draw this line back in because I'll need it. I'll need it when I'm painting, so and I'll need this down here too. Okay, So that have my lines back. Now you can draw a straight line, go up one, and we know that we're going to go our cross here, okay? We're going to skip his base. We're gonna do the same thing that we did over here because this will be the cross section minus the stem. And the leads to Nice thing is that all of these diagonals match up. The starting point for them does. So it makes it really easy for me to find where I'm going to start me next shape. So we're nicely centered on our page, and, um, what we can do now is start adding in the little, um, not so much details really like we're going to do on the leaf will save that for the very end. But you do want to mark off where the rind is gonna be, because obviously that'll be a different color. So I said earlier that I thought that when I was doing mapping the saddle made paper that I thought if I went a whole square, the rind would look too thick. So I'm going to stick with going half half a square, and I am gonna eyeball this. I'm gonna lightly sketched this in. And what I'll do is lightly sketch in these these lines. And then I will go back over them, probably with a ruler, so that I can make sure that there fairly straight, although that's really not too bad right there. Maybe this one is a little bit of straightening something like that. And if he's got a little bit of an overlap, it's on a big deal. So I'll just get rid of this line and this Ryan shape. I will probably paint it as one whole shape, as opposed to painting these individual little blocks of colors, although if that's something that you want to dio feel free. Like I said, this is your This is your design. So I've got that in there and I know that the center of my orange looks to be about right here. So I'm gonna draw on that little half circle, right, for, um, where I want my the wedges to start and I am going to use. I'm gonna go, like, halfway. I'm going to use my ruler to make these straight lines, and I'm gonna use the center of this square right here is kind of a kind of a guide, and these lines are going to go. They're gonna radio out from the center of this. So what I'll do is I'll do just what I did on the book, and I'm going use the's on the great book. I'm gonna use thes straight lines. These are going to be the center of my wedge. So this I am going toe able, and I'm just going to kind of sketch these in here. What I'm probably going to do is as I'm painting, I will be raising some of these lines. I can raise some of these now, especially on the inside, if I know that, um, I'll be painting this as an entire shape, as opposed to breaking it down into blocks. All right, so we've got that one done. And the final one is the cross section. So it's the same idea as this. We're just going to apply it to, um, the entire orange over here. - The only, um the only piece on here that's really going to have a Patrick kind of a feel is the 1st 1 Because I think the rest of these I plan on painting. Maybe I will paint this larger one. Maybe I'll break this down into shapes and paint this, um, by block. And this one, Maybe I won't. So maybe I'll try a couple of different things. And I did decide. I think that, um I would like to add in a little bit of lettering. So I think what I'll do is I will add in the word orange, maybe right. Right above here. I think that would kind of balance it out nicely. And I already know that it's 123456 So I'm thinking, if I kind of keep it the same, I already know that this is seven wide. And if that means I would be, you know, like we talked about before, dividing up this block into ah half square, so would have to start my lettering somewhere in between here if each letter is going to take up one block, which might be something that I that I actually dio. So maybe I will just kind of sketch something in here. I think I want to go, like, two blocks high. So I'm going to lightly sketch in when I'm starting this on the half block, which means that each one of the lines that I have will run through the middle of each letter, which is actually not a bad thing. So it's a good way to keep, um, keep your letters lined up, that's for sure. Something like that. So the next step is to start painting.
6. Project Demo Pt 1: welcome back and this portion of the class we're going to paint our project, which, of course you remember is your fruit on your piece of paper on your watercolor paper that you hopefully have all set and ready to go. I did want to mention that if you are not interested in picking out a fruit and you would rather paint along with me, what I plan on doing is providing you the reference sheet of the penciled out orange that I did on watercolor paper. So I will scan that, and I will put that up in the about section so that you can print that off and use that as kind of a guide, and you can draw it out on your own paper. And you don't have to worry about designing your own fruit for this lesson. Once you do it one time, it's really kind of like Sky's the limit. You won't have any problem whatsoever. Um, taking this concept and designing your own fruit, vegetable, whatever it might be. So now we're gonna move on. I wanted to show you this really quick. This is I played around with The orange is just a little bit more. And I wanted Teoh get a feel for what it was that I wanted to do. That I want a mix. Did I want to make some of my own oranges that I want to use some of the oranges that I already have in a little pan? This is a Jane Davenport palette. This is this in L E A. And this is the Daniel Smith. I have some really nice reds in this palette and the Cinelli A. I have the primary colors, and I'm probably gonna predominantly work out of this. And I might throw in some over here, maybe a couple of different colors. Um, but I think I'm mostly gonna work out of this. And I also I glazed over this which I wanted to show you this because it didn't bleed at all. You just have to make sure that the pen is dry. I also added some blew into my orange. I wanted you to see what happens. I would probably instead of dropping the blue in like they did on this square, I would actually mix the blue a little bit at a time in my palette with the orange to kind of knock it back and make it so that it's not so saturated. It'll give it kind of a muddy ah brown kind of, ah color. And you can kind of see that taking effect right here over here. And I kind of like the way that this looks. I mixed in a cooler red. It's more of a red violet with my with the yellow and the, uh, just a yellow um, and this kind of cools it down as well. It's still warm. You still want the orange to read as an orange, but if you plan on doing something that's more on the shadow side and you want, oh, give the orange some form than you would want to play around with mixing in a cooler color , which is usually the complementary color. But you have to be very careful because you don't want to make mud. So you had just a little bit at a time to kind of see where that will, uh, where it will take you more. It looks like used to like I said, you still want the orange to read as an orange, so I have to decide when I paint my orange. Do I want this to be kind of just a free for all and go with different shades of orange? Let different colors mixed together, use lighter values? Or do I want to create a three dimensional form? And I think I might do a little bit of the three dimensional with the values and the color temperature shifts just so that you can see it. I'm not going to stick to it, um, super tight, like I did on the payers. But I just want Teoh. Um, I want to do a little bit of it so that you get the idea so that this is something that you can do in the future. If that's what if that's what you want to do or if you would rather not, you can just pick whichever in the same color family and your orange family. Make sure you keep it warm. If you're doing the orange umm and you can just paint the blocks flat and then you can embellish over them with the pen or the white Joe Penn. So now we're going to go ahead and move into um painting our project so here we are with her project and I've got everything all laid out in pencil. I've got my I did find my Princeton Neptune brush, and that's what I plan on using. So as I'm working, I will probably skip around a lot because remember, we don't want to paint what squares next toe wet squares. And this is just a really good habit to get into now, because when you paint in watercolors you will apply. You'll apply the same theory. You don't want to paint a wet shape next to what shape unless you're doing it intentionally and you want them to leave together. I want this to look like a patchwork quilt, so I want these squares to stand on their own. I don't want to paint the whole shape one big, flat color. So what we'll do is we'll start painting and we will skip around two different areas, and I'm also going to make sure that I have my eraser close by. And the reason for that is that I have to erase as I'm painting. I know that the yellow and the red can be transparent. Okay, I'm going to have my racer handy so that I can erase some of these lines. I don't want to erase them completely. I still want them to be visible because I need a guide as faras where I'm painting. But I don't really want them to show through. And you don't have to erase a lot once you have the because the squares air acting as the border to the square and they're not going through the actual part of the block where your painting, it's not going to show through, um, that bad it would more so on something like this, when we're painting the wedges, we want to make sure that we get rid of a lot of these interior lines. We won't have that so much over here because they're acting is the border and not the inside of the shape. So let's go ahead and get started, and I plan on painting. I'll probably speed this up in some parts, but you can follow along, and I probably I'm just going to start, so I've got some orange and red have got some stuff going on down here already, and I am going to be a little bit mindful of, you know, my light side might excite. Like I said, I'm not going to stick to its super Rhijn. And here we go, you know, And a little yellow. No, this is the lighter, warmer side, and I don't want to use colors that are, um I don't think I want to use anything that's really earthy in nature for this orange, because I don't want it to look too much like a pumpkin. I guess I don't want to use a lot of red, Um, by itself. I'm just gonna let this red that I dropped in there kind of mixing with the yellow. So my next square. Now add in some more yellow to this when x square will he away from that first square that I painted and you can totally move over here. I like to hold off a much as I can because of where my hand will be. I am. I'm not worried really about going over the line so much as I'm I'm pay more attention. I want to get all the way down to the edge. If I go over a little bit, that's really not that big of a deal. Like I can kind of fudge that when I paint the block that's next to it. Aiken kind of wet the edge a little bit and make the color fade into the next block. It's when you don't go all the way down to the edge that you have a gap. Um, and if there's a difference in color between the two blocs that you're painting, then that becomes more noticeable. So I try to pay more attention to getting my pain all the way down to the the edge. So I'm gonna I'm gonna try a block on the other side and I want Since I know that that side is in shadow a little bit, I'm going to use the paint that I mixed earlier that has this warm yellow. And I believe this color is Rose matter. I think it's been a while since I pulled the tube out. And maybe let's see what happens if they had a little bit of blue to this. That's gonna definitely muddy it. You just want to make sure that, um, you don't have anything turning green something else that you can dio if you'd like and I usually do this. This is something that I learned from class and painting a lot with wash. We always had test papers, scratch papers next to us, Um, scrap, watercolor paper. Or even sometimes I'll just use regular regular printer paper. So pull something out of the garbage and and kind of pain. A little paint a little swatch on it, kind of see what it looks like before I actually committed Teoh to pay Burn. I don't know that I and Superfund of that, but I might try mixing a little bit more blue and see what that looks like. That's what you've had. I guess we can try that and see what happens. Let's try this. And this is the side that's away from a light, so you'll give this a go to this looks like, Well, let that dry. And let's say, for instance, that I'm not really feeling that color right. I could. If I wanted Teoh, I could decide. Hey, I don't really like that. So while it's still wet, it could take a paper towel and just push it on there and lift it off and wait till it dries and then paint over it again. Something else. If you put a color down and let's say that I had left that too dry, and I would want to make sure that I used that again somewhere over here on this dark side , at least a couple a few times, even if I'm not that crazy about the color. Just because if I left this color here and I found a different shadow color that I liked even better and I used that predominantly, this would stick out like a sore thumb. So, like I said, even if you're not super jazzed about the color, um, pop it in there a few more times. Different variations of it maybe make it a little bit lighter, but still put it over there so that your eye is not drawn to this one block that you don't like. So those were just a couple of things to keep in mind as you're painting, so I'm in a try some out of here. This is the Jane Davenport palette, which I think is really fun to. Here's a little bit of a darker orange. This might be a good orange to try to mix with, um, with some of the blue so I'm gonna put some over here, and I'm gonna grab some of this blue, you know. All right, let's see how that looks. Yeah, I think I like that better. We're still, um, in the orange family, but we've definitely cooled it down, and now it's darker. So blue is the complement of orange. Purple is the complement of yellow and green is the complement of red. And when you add the compliment, there's a complementary color to another. When you have the compliments together, you're basically muting the color and cooling it down, making a little bit darker. And I actually like the way that that looks better than this, and I don't wanna have to add that back in, so I'm gonna win this a little bit, and I'm gonna try and pull some more color off of this. Yellow is typically a staining color. Don't take your paper or your paper talon and scrub on the paper. We don't want to damage the paper because it becomes really obvious if you've got ah, tear or you've roughed up the paper too much because the paint will sink into those tears. All right, find another part of your paper towel that's dry and just push. And I think that's good enough because when I apply this color over here, you won't even know that that was on there. So what I'll do is I'll stick mostly to that color over here. Maybe I need a little more blue. Here we go. So l stick mostly to this darker orange on this side just to give it a little bit more form . I'm really trying hard not stick my hand in that, uh, paint over there in that square. Let's see what happens if I just pick up a little bit of blue and, uh, drop that in a corner. Uh, we just kind of let that sit there and see what happens. Okay, so I'm gonna mix some of this read, drop that army colored and pick up some of this yellow. I want a really, really nice, vibrant, citrusy kind of an orange color. I think that's good when you start painting and you're creating form and you're shifting your values from dark to light and you're shifting your color temperature from cool to warm when you get in the middle and your painting, um, middle values on an object. The colors There are usually the local color of the object. They are the most, uh, true. So this is where your truest oranges would would sit would be in the middle. These air the middle values through here, and then, as you move over to this side of the orange, the values will get lighter and warmer. And as you move over to this side, they get cooler and they get darker. So that's what we're trying to achieve, sort of were not being, um, I don't want to be ridiculous about this, because that's not what this is about. I just wanted to show you so that it's something that you can use in the future when you're painting and this applies all the way across the board. All of the's concepts apply to anything that you would paint. So now we need to find a square that's that looks dry. So I think we'll go right here like this orange over here, too. And I like painting like this because it's relaxing and it's no pressure kind of a thing, because all I'm doing is painting squares met at the end of got something something cool and kind of fresh that I can hang on my wall. So if I decide to move over here and I said earlier that I would paint this Ryan shape right here as one whole shape and now that I think about it, I think maybe this one I'll paint each block. And I think this one, I'm going to paint the whole shape. We'll see what that looks like. I'm still going to bury the color a little bit, so maybe I'll start on the left side of that and I plan on painting this all in one fell swoop. Obviously, if I'm gonna paint the whole shape, you want to paint the whole shape at one time, So I want to make sure since this is, this is gonna be the whole shape. I want to get these lines out of here on the inside. They're not going to act as our borders that are just going to be in the way. So I think that that's good. So I'll pick up some of this, um, paint that I mixed over here. I'm probably gonna add a little bit more, which means I need to add a little more blue. Okay, so I will start over here and make sure that I've got you know, my brush is loaded. It's not been wiped off, and it's not dry. And I'm just going to follow the paint like I'm painting my squares. It just kind of go around, paint this in segments, and I'm not really outlining anything. I am gonna kind of my paper a little bit. And I think when does this is kind of the darker side of the orange, right? This would be the side that's away from the light. So as I start moving over to the other side you see, I've got this nice. This is a nice wet edge. I was talking about pushing pain and basically pushing this puddle that I have, and I feel like it starts toe kind of run out a little bit. I'll pick up some more, Okay? And when I get away from as you can see, I just went over and I can take my paper towel. If I could do this neatly, I don't know. There, pick up a little bit of that. I just keep going. Okay. Now, as they start to get over here on this side. I'll probably grab some more just like this, straight up kind of orange. And I want to start to add a little bit of yellow. And I've got some riel yellow. We kind of an orange down here. So I'm gonna pick that up and I'm gonna drop that in, and I think I got a little too much water going on down here. Pick a little bit of that up. Go back into this yellowy orange over here, and that's what I plan on finishing this rind with. Is this yellowy this really yellowy color? I will just let that dry because if I don't, I will stick my hand in it So you can definitely see a color shift as we come around the bend here, and it's really not hard to do. You're just adding in a different color of paint as you move along and you're pushing the paint along. Now let's see if I can Years as you can see what I just did. I didn't wait for my paint to dry. I thought it was dry, so I might add a little bit of paint back in here Because what happened is when I went to clean up that little sloppy edge, it wasn't dry, so the water just flooded right in and pushed the pigment away. So I wanted to make sure that I didn't have Ah, um, up a bloom, a water bloom right here. And water blooms are totally cool. I like water blooms. I just ah, didn't want it right there. So I added a little bit more painting, and I'll let this dry for real now. And, um, maybe we'll move back over here and I will move my paper around and work this way so that I'm not laying my hands in the paint.
7. Project Demo Pt 2: Okay, so I've painted a little bit. I'm gonna let this dry over here. Little this is already dry. And I really like the way that this looks. You can definitely see the, um is a good example of the color shift from cool to warm. And also, the values could be a little bit darker over here, but I'm not gonna go too crazy. Like I said, we're not rendering, um, three dimensional orange here. We're just creating a patchwork kind of Ah ah, whimsical little thing. So, um, I think this is good. I'll obviously go back in and fill in these blocks. But I wanted you or just wanted to talk about the the actual color temperature shift and the value shift. And I was thinking to what I might do is it kind of want, um, I think this to be a little bit more warm. I guess. So. I'll show you you can, um, glaze over. Now that this is dry, I'll get some yellow and make myself a nice little cuddle. And I think I'm just gonna glaze over this with some yellow to kind of I want to kind of warm it up a little. I feel like it's a little bit, uh, flat meeting and just keep in mind that when you glaze back over something like I'm doing now and you are, you re wedding the page, so you will be re wedding the paint that's underneath. So I can actually I can drop in colors now, if I wanted. I just wanted to kind of, um, warm that up a little, and I might do the same thing on these. You'll still be able to see the shift because the colors are are transparent, but adding a little bit of yellow to the colors that seem a little bit flat or dead, Um, I think helps overall. And because we're using the same colors. So I'm kind of working from a limited palette, which is what I would suggest. Don't go crazy and pick 10 different colors that you're working from. Stick to maybe 44 or five. So I have I have this mango color that I'm working from, and I have this vitamin C, so I'm using those two. I think I may have put a little bit on this initially, but I haven't really gone back into that too much. So I'm using these two colors and then using. I haven't even touched the Daniel Smith yet. And I probably won't now that, um now that I'm working So I've been working here, as you can see, So I've got yellow and I've got my reds I've got my blue that I've been using Teoh cool the orange down, which is my puddle over here, and that's it. And those two oranges on the Gene Davenport palette and I can create ah, variation of colors on what happens when you stay with a smaller palette or you're working out of the same puddles, especially when you have, um, a section of your palate over here and you're mixing your oranges and you're mixing your yellows. They all kind of become intertwined. And because you're using the same color here is, you are over here, you're creating harmony. You're creating kind of unity across the page. And if I went ahead and, like I showed you earlier with that kind of ah Darko Khoury yellow that I dropped in over here, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. So try to keep your palate limited. Maybe four or five colors. Mix them together and you you create something that has a lot of harmony and unifies the whole painting altogether. So from here, I'm just gonna keep on painting. - So now that I'm almost done, I have to wait for those last few squares to dry before I can paint those last four. Uhm, I'm going to paint this stem. I don't think that that's that's pretty dry. So what I'll do is I'll just take the orange that I was using for the shadow side. And I'll just add more blue to it because it kind of keeps everything in the same color family. And when the brown is mixed from the paint that you're already using, it creates a nice harmony. So I'll make something up here that's not doesn't end up looking green. Hopefully, I think we can get a nice Enrico. So I think I'm gonna nice, warm brown. I just kind of dried my brush off a little bit so I can take that puddle. And now I can do the same thing. So assed faras the light and shadow goes, Since this is, um, the lights coming from over here we can make that one side a little bit darker and I'll just drop it in over here, I think, and as soon as this is dry, I can paint the leaf. But since there are some interior lines and I have to decide now if I want to paint this as one whole shape or if I want to paying each square and make it look more like this as opposed to this and I don't think that I I think most of the ones that I've done so far I've painted this as an entire shape. And I think this time I'll just go ahead and and do the square. So it kind of makes this so you're welcome to do whatever you like. You can paint all of the shapes, or you can paint that. You know, the whole shape is as one together in the same thing with this. So since I'm I'm planning on doing the, um, the shapes, I'll leave the interior lines because I'll need those for, uh, for guide, which means I can go ahead and start because I can start at this this square over here, it's furthest away, so I won't be touching anything, and I'll use probably the same yellow that I was using the light yellow that I was using. It's actually a warm yellow, and I'll mix that with the blue that I used to mute the orange. Yeah, and that's like I said, just mixed from the light yellow that I used to make my orange and the blue that I used to meet the orange. So this is the best way to create color harmony in your paintings, and you don't need a large palette. And I think I've I've proven that granted, we're not doing, um, something that has several different colors in it. But picking your color palette before you start is always a good thing. So let that dry. And I think I think I can go ahead and paint these inner squares and then we'll move on to the wedges. - Okay , so I think we can move on. I'm about all of these lines inside, the wedges erased, and I kind of tightened up. This drawing just a little bit. It's always good to know where you're going, so you want to make sure that this is mapped out. Clearly, this is painted. So I think what I'll do is I'll start with the light part first, So we'll go ahead and clean my brush, make sure it's halfway clean, you know, Like I said, this water is tented yellow, and it's really not gonna make a huge difference. Um, and this is going to be really light. I mean, the pith part of the orange. Or you would do the same thing for a lime or lemon. It's not completely wait. It does have some Ah, yellow in it. So I'm very carefully painting in between. And you want to be relatively quick about this because you don't want decide to dry, and I'll probably have to go back in and re wet anyway. And I could probably use a bigger brush for this, but I'm not going to especially going in between here, Okay, so I'm just trying to get some of these tight little spaces, and I'll probably go back up here and add a little bit more water because it's probably it's probably dry, so I can see now that all of this is shiny, which means it's wet all the way around. So now is when I would drop in my paint and let's see, I'm not going to go with a really bright yellow that I was using in the orange. I'm gonna go with something that's a little bit more on the yellow Oakar side. I don't want this to be supersaturated and super bright. So this is I think this color is called C and sorry about my head being in the way there. So I'm gonna get this going, and then I'm just gonna drop this in, and I'm gonna let it do what it wants to dio. Like I said, I don't want this to be supersaturated and probably just leave some parts. Kinda. That's about it until I'm going to do with that. And if you want to, you can maybe drop in some water. Extra water. Okay. So as I look at this, I asked myself if there are any other, you know, colors that I want to drop in. Maybe I don't want the whole thing to be all yellow. Maybe I'm going to pull out some of this in spots just to make it a little bit more interesting. So I will take my paper towel and kind of twisted up into a little shape, and then I'll just, um, lay it in and pick out some of the, um spots and lift out the water in the paint and I'll do it randomly so that it's not uniform across the board, so good. So now we can do the same thing on this side. And also, don't forget this right here, which I just did. So didn't pick up some of that pain just dropping the paint like that. So that's good, I think. Okay, so I'll clean up my brush and I'll do the same thing over here on this side. Make sure that you've got your lines erased because this is super light over here. And as you can see, you can see a couple of little lines poking through that I messed, which is no big deal, because when you look at this on the on the wall, you would have to get up really close to see those kinds of things, and I think we'll be OK. So I'm gonna start wedding this entire section and then I'll drop in that pain again, and then I'll probably left out some areas just so that it's not completely uniform. What we're gonna do is we'll wait for this to dry, and then we were going to go back in into the wedges and we'll do the same type of technique, will wet it. But we're going to drop in, uh, yellows and oranges and kind of let them mix within the wedge. And then once the entire thing is dry, we'll go back in and we'll add some embellishments on top, and it will finish off our lettering.
8. Project Demo Part 3: So this is all dry now. And I took an eraser and kind of went over the lines a little bit on the wedges. They're still there. I can see them. They're just very light. So what we'll do now? It's the same kind of a concept as what we did here. We'll just add stronger colors. And the nice thing is, is that these wedges air not touching. So we can kind of work on all of these, um, one right after the other. We don't have to wait for one to dry, so I'm going to start in this little wedge here and get this going with some water and I'll try to be mindful and get my brush up on the tip and push the water as close to that edge did a nice, um, point. So then I will pick up some of this orange that I've got on my palette and just start dropping it in. I've got some yellow, and this would be a good place. Maybe not in this little wedge, but this would be a good place to try out your sold, which is what I'm going to dio. So I have some salt right here, and I'll move on to this next wedge. I also plan on going back in after this is dry, and I'll use either white ink or the Joe Penn the white Joe Penn to go back in and add some little white highlights because this part of the orange is always, um it always looks so juicy. So those white highlights will kind of help to give that effect. And you can always tip your paper if you're not sure where you're at with your water so that you can see the sheen on it. And that should be pretty good. So I'll pick up some more of my orange and drop that in and I'll pick up some of this yellow over here. Get that dropped in. I want to make sure I get this up to this edge so that I've got a nice finish shake same thing along this edge, Okay, so you can see how what that is, and I'm gonna drop in some of the soul, and I'll see if I can get a couple pieces in here is Well, this is still wet, this little wedge, so we'll try that and see what happens, and we'll move over here and start winning this when it's the same process over and over. Like I said, my water is tinted because we've been working with yellow and orange and it doesn't really matter because I'll be dropping in those same colors. If my water were tinted blue, I would definitely switch it out for something cleaner. This is the fun part about watercolor. It's just the spontaneity and the different effects that you get. - So we'll drop ins more soul. I want to kind of stay consistent so that this has the same kind of work. Okay, And I'm just gonna keep right on painting these wedges in the same way. And this went and went technique. And when we finish this up, we'll move on to our embellishments. In detail can add as many or as little as you like, depending on the look that you're going for and something else. Like I said, you can glaze over dry water color. So if I I am doing this wedding wet technique and putting salt down and when it dries, if I feel like it's too de saturated or the salt has picked up too much of the, um, darker pigment that I like so much this orange right here I can go back over it. I can do, Ah, wedding. What technique? Over it again, once I brush the salt off and it's completely dry, so it's never with watercolor. It's never like, Ah, you know, one and done. Okay, so I've done that, and that's done, and I can't touch it again. That's not the case at all. In fact, um, a lot of artists that that I really like layer there watercolors. And that's how you create this luminosity by glazing over several times. And it's, um it's a process, that's for sure. But it really pays off in the end and gives you some beautiful effects. I'm gonna fix that right there. Well, that's still wet. And I am going to straighten out this edge just a little bit, all right? And I'm gonna drop some more. Sultan de here, okay? And I've got this last wedge right here. I think this is probably my favorite part about water color. Just this spot in 80. Okay, so now we can move on to this last Pete's, the cross section. - Okay , so we've got all of the wedges painted and they all have salt on them. So I need to let this dry completely before we decide to do anything else to it. And once it's dry, will brush the salt off, and in the next segment, we'll continue on with our detail ing. So I just wanted to show you what happens when the salt comes off. And I did. I have a little vidi travel blow dryer, and I sped things up and hit this with a blow dryer. And you have to be careful when when this is drying and you're using salt, because underneath the salt it could still be wet. And that's where I've made the mistake to brush it off. And then it's meters and I kind of used the blow dryer on a low speed and just waited and was patient. And after, I don't know, maybe three or four minutes. The whole thing is is nice and dry, and then I tested, and what I usually do now is up. I go in towards the shape so that if it smears, I can always take my my paintbrush and go back in and and clean it up. But if you brush it off a little bit in towards the shape that you've painted, your kind of avoid making a mess. So everything was dry. Now I've got this cool texture going on in the, um, in the wedges. But I see to that I've got some I've got some paint hanging out over the lines and I want to get rid of that. So I'll take my brush, my little brush and ah, wet it. And I'm just gonna go in here with that, dry my brush off and kind of pick that up a little bit so that it kind of fades into nothingness and I'll do the same thing. I can see that this is still wet over here. Actually, I'm gonna do the same thing right here, and I'll do this. Make sure you clean your brush after you've wiped off some areas. And I will say that if the area in here that we painted that pale yellow if it was white, I would probably wet this area with my brush and kind of scrub it and then take a paper towel and lift it off. But because this is already yellow. I think it's OK to wet this like this and that maybe a bit too much water, and I could just kind of spread it out over over this area that we've already painted. But I did want to show you this because it's always valuable to know how to clean up your water color. Basically, what I'm doing is what's happening is that I'm this edge is becoming kind of a soft edge. I am gonna pick a little bit of this up with the paper towel, and then I want to clean up this corner right here. And I think sometimes that when we make mistakes, those obviously those were the biggest learning moment when you learn how to come up with a solution on your own or whether you learn how to just kind of accept it. Move on. Um, I am gonna pull some of this pain out. I lost my white space in here, so I'm wedding my brush and going along here, and I'm trying to pick up some of the paint and I'll try this with my feet per towel. So I've created I pulled up. I managed to pull up some of that pain in there, and that's good enough for me. You could make out that there's a little bit of white space in there, so I think that's all right. And I'm looking around deciding if there's anything else that I really want to dio. And now that this is dry, I can go in and erase a little bit more of thes lines, and I think we're good and the next part will go ahead and start embellishing. So we'll go ahead and start on the embellishments now. And I think for myself, I plan on just adding some white details, I think, and some white detail ing in here. Maybe I'll do a little bit of, um, brown wars and dark orange over here. I'm not gonna go too crazy. I think if you've painted your orange or your fruit and different variations of the same color would look really cool to go in and do the, um, kind of like fabric print over the squares and you can make them all different. You can skip blocks, make some polka dot make some with straight lines, that kind of thing. But I did want to show you the coping this co pick Inc. And it's a little, um, dried out and I always kind of hit it with some water, a couple drops of water. Get my brush in there, and I've got a little dish that I use, and I thin this out pretty much one drop at a time. The more water that you add to this, that more transparent it becomes, and then you start have to. You have start layering, let this dry, and then adds more white to it so you can get a decent consistency and make it thick and still thin enough that it comes off the brush easily. Then you only have to go over this like one time. You don't have to worry about, um, repeated layers. Ah, Joe Panel White Joe Penn is just a Z effective. I feel like I can get a thinner line, though. Ah, the gel pens. You're limited to the size of the ballpoint. Still good. Still use it, though, so I think I'll start over here in my my wedges. And I'm just going to kind of start adding in some white areas that I think would be highlights. And I love the fact that I've kind of already got a little bit of a gauge. The salts made a great texture in here, so I could just kind of follow along with this, sold and add in, You know, it's a little accents here and there. And my ad, the little dots over here. I always like the lead that that looks and I'll probably do the same thing over here. And I know this mark right here, just kind of funny. And I've had this happen a few times to Ah, that's my nail polish. I had my hand this way when across the page, and deposited some of my nail polish. Their red is usually the worst and that, um I was able to erase some of it, but it doesn't really come off very well. So I think I'll add with God's over here. Okay, I think I'm gonna go back over here. I'll pick up some off that brown that I had made for the stem and probably add a little bit of orange into it. And I might just do like some really small dots. - Now , I'm gonna go into this leaf, an ad, some dirt green. And I'll just wet the puddle that I made before of the green that I used. And I'm just gonna add some more blue into it. That way, it's a little bit darker. So we've got to decide what we want to do here. If we want to add maybe the veins. Yeah. Maybe I'll make this just go right. Make a solid wine. I like that. Better rethink. Then I'll connect these. I pick up my joke, man. Maybe go in here and make these lines that I wanted to Initially. Joe Penn doesn't want to be playing nice. Okay? So as I'm looking at this, I think I'll leave it the way that it is. And I think we'll move on to the lettering. And if I see anything else that I want to add, I'll go back in and do it. But all let you know if I do before we move on to the lettering. So now that the embellishments are done, the details I think that, um go ahead and start on the lettering. I have mine roughly sketched in and I used the grid lines toe help me center it above this wedge. What I might do is I might just fill in the O and put a little stem and a leaf on it to kind of, um to kind of mimic nitpick orange over here. So that's the plan. And if that's the case, I need to erase some of these lines in here that intersect because I know I'm gonna fill that shape in, so I don't want that there. The rest of them, I think, are okay. I can go right over the pencil line and when it's dry, then I can hit it with the eraser and get rid of the rest. So I'm just I plan on using all different, uh, all different colors of warrants, really to do this and all use my small brush. So I think I like the way that this is looking so far, and I haven't added anymore embellishments. I think the one thing that I might do if this is dry, which I think that it iss otherwise that white won't come up this gel pad. In fact, I think instead of my joke and I'll just go ahead and use the white ink and I think that's it. I think this actually completes our project and I'll go back and wait for the lettering to dry and then all erase all of the lines and I'll show you what it looks like Nice and clean .
9. Project & Class Wrap Up: So here is the final. This is what your piece should look like. It's nice and cleaned up. All of the lines are erased. This is definitely a piece that you can keep for yourself and hang on the wall. This will look great in a kitchen or give it is a gift. And if you're really good at photo shop, you can take this into the computer, scan it and clean it up in photo shop and use it for a number of things from greeting cards , two prints or ah, whatever else you'd like to make out of it. So that is the final project. I hope you had fun. So that concludes this class. I hope you have a lot of fun with the project, and I know that I did. I haven't painted an orange yet, so it was a lot of fun for me as well. I hope you were able to take away some new tips and tricks and possibly a new method of applying watercolor, and it will only improve your skills as you keep practicing. So make sure to upload your project. I want to see everybody's project. I can't wait. Actually um, and also upload your exercises. If you've got any questions about this class or the project materials supplies, whatever it might be, just let me know. Go ahead and post in the discussion, and I will see you there.
Monica Stadalski, Artist, student, maker of things
