Transcripts
1. Intro: Hi. My name is Sharon, and I specialize in teaching watercolor, modern calligraphy, and illustration. One of the reasons I love creating is that it brings me so much peace and joy, and it can provide me with a way to relax and switch off from the world around me, particularly if I'm feeling tense or anxious. This class is all about how you can use watercolor to relax. In the class, I start by sharing some of my top tips with you for using art to relax. We cover how to choose the best colors and the best exercises for relaxing projects. I then walk you through how to create 10 different projects. These projects take different lengths of time, so it may appeal to you differently depending on how long you have or how long you want to spend painting. You can pick which ones appeal to you and come back to the class whenever you want to paint more. With each of these projects, I show you how you can turn them into either Polaroids or bookmarks, which you can add positive calming words, quotes, or affirmations to. I've tried to choose exercises that not only feel relaxing when you're in the process of painting them, but are also relaxing when you look at them afterwards. I have specifically chosen colors, styles, and patterns that evoke positive or calming emotions and reactions. My vision is that you would keep these around your house, on memory boards, or use them in your books as bookmarks, so you can see them regularly, allowing them to give you lots of positive and calming thoughts and feelings. As always, the class is in real time, so you can paint along with me, and I explain everything as I go along. For me, I find making these incredibly addictive and therapeutic. I could sit and make them all day. I hope you enjoy making them too. Let's grab our supplies and get started.
2. Your Project: In this class, I will be taking you through lots of tips for relaxation, including which colors and which exercises you can do. For your project, you can use these as simply as you like and just fill a page with the different colors, patterns, and shapes and hopefully find some that really relax you, that you can keep going back to you whenever you need to. I know that different exercises will appeal to different people, which is why I have tried to cover a range in this class. The exercises also take different lengths of time depending on how long you have, or how long you want to spend painting. I show you how you can turn these exercises into either polaroid or bookmarks, and walk you through ten different examples using different patterns and styles. I'll also give you ideas for positive common words, quite so affirmations that you can add to them. You can then place them around your home and enjoy looking at them, or even give them as gifts. The class is setup as always, that you can work through it from start to finish with the level of complexity, progressing as you go through. You can also just jump into any project that appeals to you. Ultimately, your project is to relax. Whether you do this by doodling the exercises on a big sheet of paper, or by making 20 bookmarks, I would love to see them. I'd also love to know what you found useful, and what helped you and I'm sure other students would too, so please do share your work with us. For me, I find making these incredibly addictive and therapeutic, I can sit and make them all day, so I hope you enjoy them too.
3. Supplies: In this video, I'll be taking you through the supplies that I use and that I recommend for you. I have included some outlines for the projects for you in the resource section. These include the template for both the bookmarks and the Polaroids that we'll be using in the projects. I've also included some outlines for a couple of the projects as well, just in case you didn't want to draw these out fast and instead just wanted to trace them. I'll be taking you through the measurements and process for drawing all of these out in the class. It's up to you whether you draw along with me or just use these and trace them first. I've also included this extra giant heart mosaic. We where every painting there sizing class, but it's there if you want to trace and paint it. For this Polaroid art project, I didn't actually draw it out fast. I just painted it straight onto the paper. But I thought it might be useful to have this template for those of you that would just prefer to fill in the shapes. You can download and print all of these and either trace them using a light box or by holding them up to a window. Or for the basic ones like just the templates you can cut them out and draw around them. You will need watercolor paper. I'll be using a block of Saunders Waterfold cold pressed paper. I would recommend cold press for this class and as always, at least a 140 pound thickness, so it can absorb the water. You need some watercolor brushes. I'll be using Princeton at correlate round brushes. These round brushes have a nice fine tip and a full body which can hold a decent amount of water and paint so are great for both fine lines or edges, uncovering more areas of paper. For this class, I'll mainly be using sizes six and eight. You'll need some water color paints. I'll be using Winsor Newton professional tubes, but you can also use pans or whatever paints you have. I'll be keeping the palette quite simple with the three Winsor Newton primaries, which are Winsor blue, red shade, permanent rise and wins a lemon. I'll also be using suck grain for convenience, but you can easily mix a grain using your blue and yellow. You need some water and a paper towel for taking off any excess water or paint from your brush. To draw your subjects, you'll need a pencil. Make sure it's not too heavy because you can't always raise your lines once have been covered in watercolor. You will also be useful to have in [inaudible] to get rid of any unwanted pencil lines. I recommend using a needle potty eraser because these harder eraser can damage your paper. I'll be using a ruler to draw the templates outwards. This is a metal ruler which are used for cutting my paper with my craft knife and I'll be using this mat as well. But you can use scissors or get attain if you don't have any of these, I would recommend you have either some masking tape or washing tape for protecting the borders around each of the templates. Just make sure wherever you use, you can remove it without damaging the paper. I find it quite useful to make a bunch of these templates so they're ready to paint whenever I want to do a little relaxing project. I then just use a piece of [inaudible] these down onto it. Its so much easier to do that than to take them down to the table because then you can just move around as you need to. I have used a few round objects to draw around for some of the light projects, like cello-tape, lids of bottles, glue, and a pen, things that you should be able to find quite easily around your house hopefully. Further writing, I'll be using a fine black pen. That's it for our supplies. Let's move on to some tips for relaxation.
4. Tips for Relaxation: In this video, I want to share some of my top tips for relaxing when you are painting. These are things that help me when I'm feeling a bit stressed out or anxious and when I want to unwind. The first few are how to get you feeling a little more relaxed before you've even picked up your paint brush. My first tip is to start by focusing on your breathing. It can be really easy to forget how important this is and how powerful is for helping you to feel calmer. I know when I feel tense, my breathing can get shallower, so I usually try and take a few minutes every day to count my breath to make sure I'm taking in a few good deep breaths. To do this, I use a 4-4-4 method. I breathe in for four, hold for four and breathe out for four. Let's try this now. Start with a nice deep breath in for four, hold it for another four, and then slowly breathe out. Let's do this again. In doing this just a few times when I want to unwind, perhaps before sitting down to paint really calms me. I would definitely recommend starting with this whenever you're feeling like you need to relax. It is also really important to remember to keep breathing when you're painting. I've had a few students say to me that they hold their breath when they're painting a strike. This is going to hold tension in your body and won't help you relax, so make sure you stay aware of your breathing as you're painting. My next tip is to focus on your environment and how it's making you feel. For me, having physical clutter around on my desk or visibly in the room that I'm working in can make me feel mentally cluttered too, and make me feel a bit tense. Before I sit down to paint, I just like to clear things away that I don't need or at least get them out of site or out of the way. Clear your desk and get the supplies that you need for whatever you're painting ready, so you're not scrambling to find them as you go along. I also like to remove any distractions. Perhaps turning the television off or moving your phone away will helped too, so you can fully focus on your painting and your breathing and how you are feeling. Additionally with the physical clutter, it's a good idea to clear any mental clutter you have as well. If your brain is feeling busy and you have a lot of thoughts going on around your head, just grab a pen and paper and write them all down and put it to one side to go back to later. Next, start paying more attention to your thoughts. The mind is incredibly powerful at changing how we feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Surround yourself with relaxing words or affirmations while you paint. I love the quote, "Your focus determines your reality." Where possible, try not to focus on negative stressful things like watching too much news or dwelling on something that happened and turning that off in your mind. Instead, move your focus to something that calms you. Something that you're grateful for. Or simply just repeat positive affirmations like, I am calm, I am relaxed. I always thought this sounded silly, but I've been doing it a lot over the last few months, and I've really noticed a difference in how it makes me feel. We'll be adding calming and positive words to the projects and I'll be giving you ideas for more words, affirmations, and quotes throughout the class. Okay, my next tip is to think about the colors that you're using. We'll go into this in more detail in the next couple of videos. Colors can have a significant effect on how you feel, and if you're intentionally wanting to paint for relaxation, then there are some colors you may wish to choose, and some you may wish to intentionally avoid. Make sure you choose your subjects carefully as well. If your main goal is to relax, then don't choose something that is technically very challenging for you because this could make you feel frustrated and even more tense. Again, we'll talk about subjects more in the next couple of videos and the types of shapes and patterns that are psychologically quite calming to paint and to look at. One final tip for you is about music. I was going back and forth about the decision whether to add some relaxing background music to these videos, especially during the longer, quieter gaps when we're painting repetitive patterns and there's no need for constant commentary or guidance. A couple of you have fed back that you would like music, but most have said they appreciate the lack of music in my classes. I decided not to add music, but instead, I encourage you if you want to, to play your own choice of background music while watching this video. Slow music is great for having a calming effect. There have actually been studies done that show it seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication can, which shows just how powerful it can be. That's really interesting. I usually just hop on to Spotify on my phone or laptop and search for either chilled hits or one of their peaceful piano playlists. You can also search for light jazz, classical music, or general easy listening music which have all shown to have big benefits and to help people feel more relaxed. I hope these tips have been helpful for you. Now let's move on to looking at colors in more detail.
5. Colours: I wanted to dedicate a video in his class to colors, because they can have a significant impact on you motions and how you feel, whether you are aware of it or not. Colors can affect your mood, your heart rate, and your alertness. More so typical reactions that you can attribute to certain colors, these are not necessarily universal. Cultural and individual differences and preferences will have an impact too. Something that calms you may have a more negative effect on someone else. It's good to try and start being more aware of how colors impact you personally. I would recommend choosing colors that not only calm you, but also colors that you love. Because we'll be looking at the [inaudible] was painting and potentially afterwards. You want to look at something you like and enjoy. For example, I know purple can be a calming color, but I don't really like it, I know that's controversial, so that's a color I would avoid. I'll take you through some general feelings evoked by different colors, but it's important to remember that these are not necessarily universal. Let's start with blue. Blue can be a very soothing and calming color. It can often be found in nature like a lovely palpably sky, which I know I find calming to look at, awesome car motors. But it can also be quite an icy cold or even a sad color. It's important to choose the right blue, if you want it to make you feel calm and positive. We'll look at some mixes of blues shortly. Green is generally a great calming color, that can be used to relieve stress and evokes sense of tranquility. It's the color of nature, and is generally quite afresh and harmonious color, associated with growth and safety. Is one of my favorite colors to using watercolor, as there were so many wonderful mixes you can make. I have dedicated a whole class to this topic here on Skill-share. If you like greens too, then I'd recommend checking that out. Yellow tends to be a very lively and energetic color associated with summer positivity and happiness. Whilst a bright yellow may be very stimulating and so not necessarily very relaxing. A lighter, soft or pastel yellow can be quite soothing. Orange is also a stimulating color representing warmth and energy and can be used to draw attention. Again, you may wish to avoid the brighter versions of this and try some more pale or softer mixes. Red can evoke strong emotions, it can represent passion and energy. It can symbolize love and warmth, but it can also be an intense or even angry color. I've tended to avoid red for relaxing projects unless it's for a particular subject that requires it like hearts. Pink is a more gentle version of red, representing love and affection and can be used as a sign of hope. A bit later in this video, I'll show you how to soften the bright bold pinks to make more softer pastel colors and also how to make some lovely dusky pink colors, which I've used in some of the projects. Purple tends to be a calming color associated with wisdom and creativity. As I said, I don't tend to use purple much as a personal preference, but I know it's a popular color, so I've showed you a few examples later in this video of some mixes. Finally, let's just look at black and white. White can represent peace and purity. Whilst you don't paint with white in watercolors, you can bear this in mind with your composition. For these projects, I've left borders around the paintings, so there is plenty of white space. Black in contrast can be quite somber and can represent morning and sadness, so I would suggest avoiding that for these projects. Within each of these colors, there are so many different variations that you can make that will have differing levels of calming effects. For me, I love pastels and soft colors like baby pinks and baby blues and bolder bluey greens like teal and turquoise, which I'll show you how to make shortly. I made some swath cards of different colors, some are relaxing, some are less relaxing, so I can keep these to have a reference for what colors I can choose. I'd recommend you doing this too, to play around with what colors you have, so you can see what you find calming. Now I just want to show you how I mix up some of my favorite relaxing colors. Let's start by looking at pinks. I have some permanent rose in my palette. Using this on it's own is a very strong color, is quite a bold, bright pink, so I probably wouldn't use it on its own for these projects. One way we can make this more of a calming color is to simply dilute it down with water. Generally, this is a great simple method for getting some paisley colors with your paints just by adding more water to them. With this pink, you can also add a little of your yellow, which makes it a more of a paisley color. I'm going to move some of these permanent rose over to here and just add a touch of my weensy yellow. You want to be careful not to add too much, as it will easy turn orange, but it would just take away some of that brightness. It almost turns into a bit of a peachy pink. You can see it softened ever so slightly. Now with this mix, we can just try a few more variations, perhaps adding a little more yellow or adding more water and that's much more baby pink, which is really lovely. I'm going to take a little more of this pink and put it in here. This time I'm going to add a tiny bit of my sap green. You only want a tiny amount of this. Because green is a complimentary color, is going to neutralize that pink, takeaway some of that brightness and dull it down a little bit more. This is how you can make a more muted dusky pink, which is one of my favorite pinks. You can see how making these subtle editions can take away that boldness and make this pink more calming. You don't necessarily need a really big palette, you can just stick to your three prime raise and just mix them up ever so slightly just to tweak the colors and you go from having a bright bold pink, to a really calming dusky pink, or a lovely peachy, paisley pink. Now let's just label these up before we forget what they are. Next, let's look at some blues and mix up some of those lovely teals and turquoises, which is my favorites. The main color that we'll be starting from is the weensy blue, and then we want to add some of our weensy yellow to it. Actually before we continue, I'm just going to use my other brush to pull out some of that weensy blue so that we can compare the difference in the page. You can see that's quite an icy cold blue primary blue, so I wouldn't use that on its own for these for relaxing projects. You can see I've just added a touch of yellow. This is really thick, so it's really quite dark, and that's still very blue. You just want to add your yellow in very gradually so it doesn't go to green. Now that's starting to turn into a really lovely teal color. Again, just play around with different levels of water and different amounts of blues and yellows because in some of these projects is really nice to have a variation on the scale of the slightly bluey teals and the slightly more green teals. This is a lovely baby play now. We're going a bit more green now but there are so many bluey greens in between this weensy blue and is going to play around with. I'm going to put a bit more blue back in there. Here is my swatch card again, just to show you some of variations of this simple mix. We'll also be using some green in the class. This is the sap green on it's own. You can add a touch of permanent raise to this to make it more neutral. Let's add a bit more water to that. You can also add a bit of blue to your green which will make it a bit colder. Then you can really dilute these down for more of the pale paisley colors. For these purples, I just mixed together the weeny blue and the permanent rose. Depending on the ratio of each color, you can get a lot of different purples from these pinky purples to these more bluey purples. Again, you can dilute each of this to get these lovely soft colors. Don't forget to go back and label all of your colors if you know what they are, if you want to make them again. I'll leave the color mixing map. I'd recommend you continue playing around with your pallet to find which colors you like and which you find nice relaxing and calming to paint with and to look at. Next, we'll be moving on to looking at different exercises and patterns.
6. Exercises: In this video, we will look at practicing some exercises and patterns that I think are relaxing. As I mentioned in the last video, if you're choosing something specifically for relaxing, I would recommend going for something that is not too challenging or ambitious for you. I find that simple strokes, shapes, repetitive patterns, and just playing around with colors and watching them bleed into each other really relaxes me. But this can be different for everyone, so I've given you a few options of projects in this class. Let's just start by practicing some simple lines. This can be more about the action and the motion than what it actually looks like, we don't need to worry about looking really neat. We can intentionally try to slow down, to go a little bit slower than we would normally with the strikes. This is a great thing to do to calm me because when you're tensed, you may automatically want to rush things. But forcing your body to slow down can have a great calming effect with both the hand movement and brushstroke and your breathing. So focus on your breathing too once you are doing this. Simple shapes like circles are also great for relaxing, is good to focus on things that are softer, rounder, perhaps more consistent, and try and avoid irregularities and sharp edges. Circles can represent unity and completeness. There are a positive shape. I've used circles in a few of my projects for this reason, you could just paint a whole page of circles if you wanted to. Squares are also good, simple shape. You don't need to worry about making them look too neat, I really like the way this relaxed type of square looks. We use this in a couple of our projects as well later in the class. Triangles are another simple shape and apparently psychologically, they should be always sitting on that base as that represent stability. If they're upside down, they can be psychologically a bit unsettling, which is interesting, so it maybe worth keeping that in mind when you're choosing your shapes. Simple waves are also a good exercise and you can do these really slowly and have them mirror your breathing if you really want to focus on slowing down your breath. You would need to have slightly bigger waves in this for it to follow a good deep breath. A few other shapes that you can practice and do to with your brush are spirals and arches. Let's start with the spiral. Again, these both have that rounded shape and smooth lines which is psychologically very relaxing and comforting. You can make these into a simple pattern by painting another line inside of this one. You can also paint boxes inside one another. Again, is just the simple repetitive pattern that is relaxing. You can also try more organic shapes, almost circular, but a bit looser like a coffee world. In the last project in this class, we paint a mosaic heart with these types of shapes and they look lovely when you vary the value across the whole piece. We can also practice painting a simple leaf shape. Again, this is going to be in one of our projects later in the class project 5, where we will paint two layers of leaves overlapping each other. There are some simple shapes and doodles. You can spend a while just doodling different shapes like these for no particular reason. I know I find it relaxing when I do that and there is absolutely no pressure for any kind of finished piece when you're doing something like this. These obviously all wet on dry. Let's look at some simple wet on wet exercises now, these are great for relaxing exercises because this technique create such soft blend. It can be really relaxing just to watch the paint slowly spread and figure out what it's going to do because it can be so unpredictable. For this first exercise, just pick up some water on your brush. We're going to paint some vertical lines on the page just with water. I'm painting three vertical lines, fairly thick, but with a gap in between each. You want a fairly good amount of water in each of these. Now pick up your paint and starting on the left side of that first wet line on the dry paper just paint a thin horizontal stroke, crossing all of these wet lines. You'll be able to see that contrast between the wet on dry and then the wet on wet and see the paint almost explode on the wet paper. I love watching this type of technique. I just find it really interesting to see what it's going to do. We can keep going and paint a few more lines now. I did make a Polaroid with this technique, and I love that one. I didn't include in the projects because I had to stop somewhere and I thought 10 was enough. But this looks lovely when you have the border around it with that masking tape and that contrast of the soft flowing blends of paint against that white backdrop which contains o. It may be an extra project you want to do at the end of the class. This time, let's add a square of water to our page and just play around with some more wet on wet. Grab your paint and add it in at the top of your square and just watch it flow into the water. You can tip your page to move it around in that square a little bit more. Let's pick up some more paint now and build on that bit at the top. Again, you can just tilt it up again to make it fly more. I love doing this when it's not for a particular project. You can just watch the paint move around because every time you do this, you can be sure that it would react differently depending on how much water you have on the page, how much water you have on your brush, how you add the paint. I just love how soft this one looks. Let's add some more water to our page in another block. This time, we can add a paint in general strokes across the whole block and then just watch it blend in. Now we can practice using the kiss technique, which we'll be using for projects 6, 7 and 8. This is another technique I love. Let's start by adding a fairly thick line of paint down on our paper. We can then add some more to our brush and paint another stroke underneath, touching that up-line at a couple of points, so the paint starts to bleed in a little. You can always pick up a bit more paint and dub it ever so gently at that point where they connect. If you want to make that bleed a bit more. Now I can pick up our paint again and paint another line underneath, again touching this at a couple of points, and then pick up some water and run them underneath. Let's do a couple more strokes to practice this one. We'll be doing the same exercise with lines like this for project 6 and we'll be using the technique for circles and squares in project 7 and 8. Now let's practice the same technique with circles. Pick up your paint and paint a simple circle to start with. Don't worry about it being too neat, but you want enough pigment in there because next we'll paint a circle just with water next to it. Wash the paint off of your brush, dub the excess off of the side of the glass and then from the very edge of the circle, pull away and start painting another circle. This will pull the paint into the second circle and you can see it's bleeding in. You can always add a little more paint to that connection. But this has gone a little funny now. So be careful with doing that. Let's try this one more time. As I said, we'll be using this technique with circles in project 7 and it really looks lovely when you have so many different circle sizes and a range of values. Plus, for that one, we add some smarties at the end, which looks really nice. If you wanted to practice this exercise a little more, or you just enjoy painting circles and watching these bleeds you can paint a whole grid of circles touching each other. Just alternate between darker and lighter values. So using more and less paint, I pretty much always find painting with watercolor relaxing. But these exercises are quite liberating in a way. You don't need to worry about what the end result is going to be. That is little fun exercises where you can loosen up your brush stroke a little more and just watch the paint do its thing. That's the end of our exercise session. I hope you've enjoyed this, I'd love to hear which of these exercises you find relaxing and enjoying. Next, we will draw and cut-out our templates for the projects.
7. Making the Polaroid Templates: In this video, I want to show you how I made the polaroids, and in the next video I'll show you how I made the bookmarks. You can draw these out as I have, adopt these sizes as you would like, or you can use the templates I have provided in the resources section to just simply trace them. I find it's quite nice to call out a few of these, they're ready to go whenever I want to paint a little relaxing project. So here are examples of the two different sizes I have made for the polaroid and the bookmark. I'm using a saunders waterford block, which is 12 inches by 9 inches tall, and can fit six of the polaroids on one page or six of the bookmarks. But as I said, feel free to adjust these sizes to whatever paper you have. I will be using as much of the paper as possible to avoid wastage. These polaroids are 10 cm wide by 11.5 cm, and the box inside, where I will paint in, is 8 cm square, leaving that gap at the bottom for the lettering. So let's start by drawing these out on the page fast. I can fit three along the width, so, I'm marking a point at each 10 cm at the bottom of the page. I will do that again at the top, so, I can line these points up and draw a straight line to divide them up. I can fit two on top of each other, so, I'm going to mark 11.5 cm, which is the halfway point down the page as well. Now we can line all of this out with our ruler and draw these lines. Okay. So there we have our six outlines. I allowed a 1 cm border around each of the paintings, so, next I'm going to mark out these points, either side of these lines. [pause]. I will do that at the top as well again, and then we can draw those in. Just make sure to do these very lightly so that we can erase these later on. We also want that 1 cm board at the top, and then the square is 8 cm, so, that will bring us down to 9 cm here, which will be 2.5 cm out from the bottom to give us some space for the writing. So let's mark this on the right side as well so we can line these up. Again at the bottom, we want to go 1 cm down, and then, 2.5 cm up from the bottom, and then, discharge that 8 cm, and then, line these up and draw them in. Now we have drawn out six of this. We can cut them out. First because I'm working on a block which is glued on all four sides. I'm going to remove my paper. It has this gap at the top. If you haven't used a block before, you just want to use something like a pallet knife. Nothing too sharp. So do not use a normal knife, otherwise, it can mark the paper underneath. So I'm just going to slide this in and mark my way gently around the edge. That's not detached from the block. So now I'm going to cut these out so you can either use scissors or use a cutting mat like me and a craft knife. I have my metal ruler. You want to avoid using the craft knife for cutting to them. I'm going to start with the edges. I'm also going to trim the rest of the edges ever so slightly, just because they have a little bit of that glue left over from the block. You can see this is just a slider, so, it shouldn't affect the border. Next, I'm going to cut it in half. So just make sure you get the right line and then cut the rest of them. You can actually just leave this on the block and paint them on that cutting them out afterwards. But it's quite nice having a little stack of these, so, you can grab one whenever you want to paint something, and you don't have to worry about all this drawing and cutting every time. You also don't need to worry about splashing paint across the page and marking the other ones if you paint them individually like this. The next thing I do, is grab a piece of card and tape it down ready for painting. For this, I use my masking tape. I've got a couple of different widths. You can also use washing tape, if you haven't got masking tape. Make sure you don't use anything like sellotape as it would damage the paper. You want to make sure you've got something that is removable. So now I'll just tape it to the card lining up with these lines so we can protect that white border. You don't have to use masking tape if you don't have it, you would just need to work more carefully around these edges to protect that border. Then I'll just do that all the way around so it's ready for painting. In the next video, I'll show you how to draw out the bookmarks.
8. Making the Bookmark Templates: Now, we're going to draw a templates for the bookmarks. Again, you can use a template I've provided and trace them, or you can just follow these instructions and draw them out with me. The bookmarks are five centimeter wide, and they have a half centimeter border around the edge. At 20 centimeter long, and there's about a three centimeters down at the bottom for the lettering. I can fit six bookmarks on this page, so I'm going to mark every five centimeter, and I'm going to do the same at the top so I can line them up and draw lines down the page. Now we want to make up bookmarks 20 centimeter long, so I'm going to start one centimeters down just to give a little gap away from the edge, and then from that I'll mark 20 centimeter. I'm also going to mark three centimeter up from the bottom for that gap for the lettering. I'II do the same way for this side, so one centimeter down and then another 20 centimeters down, and then three centimeters up again, and then draw those three lines in. If you want too, you can then draw half a centimeter border inside the edge from the top and the sides. You can go all the way down to this line, you don't need another border up here. I'm just going to mark that out with my masking tape because I know my tape is one centimeter wide, so I'm just going to place it evenly over the edge. Again, I'm going to remove this from the block and then we can cut them all out. I'm going to trim the top and the bottom fast, and again, like before, I'm just going to trim the glue of this edge very slightly. Then that final leftover gap at the end of the page, and now we can cut each of the bookmarks out. Now, we have a pod of bookmarks to work from, so grab your card and let's take this down. I'm using my thin one centimeter masking tape, and I'm just going to take this down at the top for that half centimeter border. Again, if you find easier, you can draw this board out first if you want this to be exact. This bottom one is going to go right up to that line, and then along these edges, I am just trying to do this as neatly as I can. Now we're ready for our projects.
9. Project 1: Wet on Wet: For the first project, we'll be painting a simple wet on wet wash. I've done a few examples for you here and you can see how simple this one is. It really doesn't take too long, but I think they look really nice and relaxing with these lovely soft blends. As I said, this will be wet on wet. We'll start by covering the paper in a light layer of four to fast and then add the paint to it. We'll be doing this in horizontal strokes, which creates this nice calming effect. With the wet on wet, you always want to make sure your water is clean. If it's not, you can go and do that now before we start. Another option, I just want to quickly show you before we start with this simple wet on wet washes, is that you can use them as a background and add a nice color over the top like this one. For this one, I'll be doing a Polaroid. Grab your paper. I'll be using my larger size 8 brush to lay down the water and I'll be using a separate brush for the color to mix them up and this is a size 6. For this, I'm going to be using my sap green. You want to make sure your color is mixed up before you lay down your water on your paper so that the water doesn't dry while you're mixing your color. There's a little of my Windsor blue, which is already on the palette. I'm going to add that to my green as well. I'll put that brush aside for the moment and then use my clean size 8 for the water. I'm going to cover this whole square with the water. I don't want a big puddle. I just want a nice sheen of water across the page. Try and make sure it's nice and even. If you have any extra water on there, you can just use your brush to pick it up. You just need to make sure your brush is fairly dry. I'm going to add the colorant starting from the top, working in horizontal lines and try and intentionally slow down when you're doing this. You should notice how much common that makes you feel just by that simple action. It is easy to always rush these things. But it's good to be conscious about how these little changes can make us feel. Just watch the paint bleed into the water. I always find it say relax and just to watch that. It can be quite unpredictable how much it's going to bleed in. Make sure you're aware of your breathing. Perhaps breathing a little bit deeper, a little bit slower than you would naturally. You can then clean you brush, take off that axis water, and then lift any paint off that you want to or move around. Keeping with those horizontal lines will help make it flow steady and balanced. The aim here is by the slide purposeful action of each of these strokes that we pay attention to plus the coloring effects of the colors and the patterns that we've chosen that we can see. It should be having a positive impact both physically and visually. That is now complete. We just need to wait for it to dry and then we can remove the masking tape. Now, this is dry. Let's remove our tape. I'm going to put this to one side on my card so I can reuse it. This will depend how much paint you have on whether it's going to be good enough to use again but I like to waste as little as possible. Now if you want to, you can add a word or a quote or an information at the bottom. I've added some ideas on the screen now for you choose from. If you don't want to risk writing this directly onto the page, you can either use pencil first or you can trace the arm with a light box. I'm going to be using the quiet based dell for this one. I'm using my pigment micron size 1 to go over it so it's not too thick. Now we can remove any pencil lines and we have a first finished project. With this, you can put this up on your memory board or take it to the wall next to your desk. I'd love to see what you created and if you found this relaxing, so please do you share in the project section and let me know. For the next project, we'll be painting simple lines.
10. Project 2: Lines: For this project, we are going to be painting simple stripes. Here are a few examples that I have done before. I will be doing a bookmark for this one, but if you want to do a Polaroid instead, you can, you have a few options. You can keep the lines constant or you can vary the width. You can start a little bit darker at the top and get lighter as you move down which looks really nice and soft. I will be going for baby blue color for this one, I am going to start with my Windsor blue and I will be adding a fair amount of water to it to dilute it as I want this to be quite pale. I am going to add a little of my Windsor yellow to this to take away that coldness from the blue and then just test it. I would always recommend testing your colors first. I want a little more yellow in there. When diluting your colors like this, just remember that you do not need any excess water in your brush. I'ts just about diluting the pigment that's in your brush. Make sure you still take out any excess water before painting. That looks like a good color for me. I am just going to dilute it a tiny bit more. I am going to start at the top and work my way down. If you find you have got too much water, just dry your brush on the paper towel and lift it up. Again, just try and practice going a little slower than you would normally, making that intentional choice to slow everything down and see if you notice how that feels, if it has a calming effect on you, and focus on your breathing, breathing in deeper and breathing out slower. I find that doing projects like this, particularly painting repetitive things like lines and patterns can be good to help you switch your mind off,so you are just focusing on the brush strokes and how you are feeling. There are no tricky techniques involved to acquire too much effort or brainpower. You can see these are starting to look quite pale,and like they do not stand out much. But once we have taken away that masking tape, they are going to stand out a bit more against that white border and they are going to look lovely and soft. Don't be afraid of going really pale with this one. This is one thing I love about water color which you do not get with other paints. The subtlety and transparency that you can get with these diluted mix is I just think they are lovely. Now just keep working towards the bottom. Once you have finished just wait until it is dry and then remove the masking tape. Now I am going to add some lettering to this,and for this one I am going to add the water hype, but I have also added those ideas back on the screen for you again, so you can choose something different if you want to. I am using my pigment micron pen again for this, but any fine black pen will do. We are done. I hope you have enjoyed the simplicity of this one. I do love this one because it looks so calming and subtle. For the next project we'll be painting circles.
11. Project 3: Circles : So this project we'll be painting circles, and here are a couple of examples using either template. These circles won't be touching each other like in the later example using the kiss technique. We'll be drawing these circles, and then filling them in. For this, I use three circles that I drew around, but this is also in your resource section to trace, if you'd prefer. I used the lid of my bleed proof white, and a hub jar would probably be around the same size. I used this for the bigger ones, the lid of some glue for the medium ones, and then I drew around the end of a pen for the smallest one. I'll be doing the book mark again for this one, and we'll start by drawing these circles. If you're tracing the template, then you can skip this bit and skip ahead to the minute showing on the screen now. I find it easiest to start with the biggest circles, and I'll draw three or four of these in coming off of the page. Now, pick up your middle sized circle, and draw a few of these in the gaps. We can add a couple just coming off the edge as well. Then finally, we can add a few of the smallest ones in. Now we can start painting. For this one, I'm going to mix up a teal color, using my Winsor blue and Winsor lemon like we practiced earlier in the class. Just remember, you don't need too much yellow in that mix to soften that blue. Test out your mixes before we start. That's a lovely concentrated mix, and I can dilute that later on to give some variety to the piece. I find it easiest to try and fill as much as you can in the center, and then walk around the edges more delicately before it dries. If you find you have any little pores of water in there, just dry your brush on your cloth or paper towel, and use your brush to pick up the water, otherwise, you might end up with hard lines when it dries. Try and vary your colors as well either varying the values, by diluting the paint a bit more like this one, so it becomes a bit lighter, or by adding a bit more blue, or yellow to the mix. Turn the paper as you need to, to make it easier for you to paint. I'm trying to keep mine very still, so it's easier for you to see, but you may find it easier to just keep turning the paper around. Dilute your mix a little more just by dipping the brush in the water, and taking off any excess on the edge of the jar. Keep going back to your breathing, and checking in with how you feel as you are doing this, making sure you're relaxed, you're sitting comfortably, and letting any tension go. Now, we've got a couple of lighter, bigger circles in there. We can go back to a more concentrated mix, and make some of those smaller circles a bit darker. If you find out the paint is pulled in next to the masking tape a little like this, then just use your brush to pick it up. I'm going to turn this around now, so I can get to those circles at the top will be easier. I'm going to add a little more blue into the mix to vary the color slightly, as they're all looking quite similar at the minute. I'm using my size six brush because these have such a lovely fine point. But if you're struggling with these smaller circles, then just switch to a smaller brush. You can see how just adding a little more of that blue, just makes the whole piece looks more interesting. This one, I'm going to add a little more water to just add a bit more variety in there. Once it's dry, we can remove the masking tape. Now, we can remove those pencil lines. If you want to, you can use a white pen, or opaque white paint to add a few highlights. This is my uni-ball signo pen. I'm just going to draw in some short lines next to the curve of the circle. For this one, I'm going to add the word joy. That one's finished. I love how these look like floating bubbles, I find it really calming. For the next project we'll be painting layered squares.
12. Project 4: Layered Squares : For this project, we are going to be painting squares. This is actually the one I painted in this video, I'll be began to be layering all squares in this project. This one was done with a flat brush, so the edges are quite sharp and neat. But for this project, I wanted these squares to be a little bit softer, a bit more organic and relaxed in their look. I'll just be using a round brush so we can quickly practices shape. You don't have to worry too much about making these really neat. We'll be varying the values of these squares, making some lighter and some darker. We'll do one layer fast, and then once it's dry will do another layer on top. I'll be using my blue-green mix again, which is my windsor blue and my windsor lemon, and I'm using my size six brush. I'm going to start at the top in this top left corner and work my way down. As we start this, we can just take a moment to check in on ourselves. How are we sitting, how we're feeling. Start taking the deeper, slower breaths, and start thinking about some of those positive affirmations that we can repeat to ourselves like, I am calm, I am relaxed. If you get any little pools of water like that, then just pick it up with the brush. We want to vary the strength of these colors throughout the pace. Let's pick up a stronger color now with more pigment. I'm not going to have any of these squares touching in the first layer, as I don't want them to bleed into each other, will wait for this to dry, and we'll do our second lab squares over the top. In a later project, we'll be during the case technique for squares where they will be touching and will get these nice soft blends. But this project is just about layering. Almost we still have the colors on our brush, we can dilute it a little in our water and then go straight onto painting the next one. We don't need to constantly be picking up our paint, we can just use all of the pain in our brush. I'm dotting these squares about a bit randomly. There's a mix of different values across the pace. You see I haven't picked up any new paint. I just keep diluting the paint that's already on my brush to get these paler valleys, and I'll keep doing this until I run out of paint on my brush. Don't overthink this. You don't need to make your squares perfect. Just concentrate on relaxing and enjoying the process, and keep going back and checking on your breathing. We can add another pale one up at the top here. I think I can probably get one more on this painting to my brush before it comes to pale. That one is a little pale, but will go with it. I'm going to pick up a little more pale now. I'm going to go from more of a blue mix now, just slightly bluer than what we already have. I'm going to add a couple of these dark ones in, as all of the ones we have so far are fairly pale. These simple exercises are also useful for practicing water control. Paying attention to how much water you're using and what effect it's having. Perhaps trying again with a little less water or little more so you can find out what works best. These brushes are lovely for holding lots of water. Whatever brush you have maybe quite different brushes can behave very differently. The amount of paint or more to I'm picking up won't necessarily be the same that you need, you may need to do more often or less often. The main thing is to pay attention to what's happening on your page and with you brush, and then you can really get to know your supplies. That's the first lay done. We can wait a few minutes for it to dry and then continue. Pause the video here and then come back when yours is dry. Now this is dry, we can do a secondary squares and we can just start overlapping the squares on that first layer. You can see this one is bleeding editor, as square underneath it's got a lot of pigment in that, and probably isn't completely dry, so I'm just going to pick them up to stop it from spreading. Now, we can just continue again, varying the values as before, using different strengths of the colors. All you really need to be thinking about is choosing where your next square is going to go, and which strength of color you're going to choose. I've just added in a little more yellow to the mix now, so I can have some slightly doing the squares is not too green, just a subtle variation on what we've already got. I'm going to go for a slightly more concentrated mix with this now, so I'm using some more pigment. That's really lovely color, definitely one of my favorites. We're getting to the point now where it's getting quite full, and probably I know frame for a couple more squares. Just take a second to stop and look at where needs and extra square on your pace. I'm going to add one over this to pale squares down here. I'm just going to add one more final one at this edge here. Now, we can wait for that to dry and then remove our masking tape. For this one I'm going to add the word friendship and more of script style. I'm going to write this lightly and pencil fast so I don't mess it up. If you want to choose another word again, I've put these ideas back up onto the screen for you, and then I'll go over that with my black pen. That's our fourth project template. I hope you've enjoyed it and hope you've enjoyed them so far. Let me know what you think to the class I'd love to know and don't forget to share your work with me and the other students. In the next video, we'll be painting a Polaroid of simple leaves.
13. Project 5: Leaves: For the next project, we're going to be painting some simple leaves. So here are some examples. So just like the squares we'll do one layer, wait for it to dry and then paint a second layer over the top, all of mixed values. So you can see we have a lovely range of darker and lighter leaves in here. For this one, I'll be using my Polaroid template and I'll be using my Sap Green with a touch of my Winsor Lemon. I'm going to mix up first and test it. I'm using my size six round brush again. Okay, let's start painting some leaves. We're going to be keeping these really simple. Using the tip of our brush, we can start by first painting a fine line for the stem, and then increasing the pressure to paint the shape of the leaf coming to a nice fine point at the tip. I'm going to add some water to my palette with the paint that's already on my brush so that's diluted even more and I'll be using this to paint some lighter leaves. We don't want these leaves touching. We'll just be painting them in different directions, filling in any gaps on the paper and then when they're dry we'll paint another layer of leaves overlapping them just like with the squares. I'm going to leave a bit of space and paint another leaf in with this light value up here and we can come back later and add a dark one in that gap. We don't want all the light ones next to each other, so it's quite nice to just dot them around a bit randomly. Using this same mix again, we can go down to the bottom and paint another one in here. I'm going to add a little more water to dilute this, a tiny bit more, and with this, I'm going to add another leaf at the top corner. If you have any hard lines like this appearing, you can gently try and blend it in, but be careful, it can be a little risky, so make sure you don't overwork it. Okay, now we have quite a few paler leaves in there. We can pick up a more concentrated mix of our green and add some darker leaves in. I'm going to turn my page around now. Remember, you can turn yours around as much as you need to. Just make this as easy and as comfortable for yourself as possible. Okay, I'm going to go for an even darker green now. Now we're getting fairly low on space. Just start to try and plan out where the last couple of leaves are going to go. So I think I can add one more here in the middle and then I can paint the tip of one or two at the edge. I'm going to add a bit more yellow into the mix this time to add a bit of warmth to it. Now we can paint a couple at the edges just to fill in those gaps. Okay, now wait for this to dry and then we can continue with our second layer. Now this is dry, let's start painting over the top. We're going to do exactly the same using the same mix values as we did in the first layer. So let's start with a fairly dark mix and we can start painting these at the bottom. Then I think I'll add another dark one over those two paler ones on this side to balance it out a bit more. So try and have a balance with light ones on top of dark ones and vice versa. Try not to cluster all the dark ones together or the light ones together. Now let's do a light one over that dark leaf on the right side. You can change the mix slightly, adding a bit more yellow. So I'm going to mix up a fairly diluted mix of this. Okay, I feel like this needs another couple of dark leaves in that corner now. Okay, I think we're almost done. I think I'll just add one more leaf in this gap going over this darker leaf. We're done. Wait for this to dry and then remove you masking tape and then we can add our lettering. So this one, I'm going to add the word forever and I'm just roughly planning out first counting the letters, but feel free to draw this in pencil or trace it if you feel more comfortable doing so. Okay, and that's our final piece for project number five. I hope you've enjoyed it. Next, we'll be moving on to painting lines using the Kiss Technique.
14. Project 6: Lines - Kiss Technique: For this project, we'll be using the kiss technique and painting lines. We'll be alternating the values. Starting with the dark line and then painting a lighter one or even just using water and touching them together, so they bleed into each other. We get all these lovely soft blends. For this one, I'll be using a dusky pink mix. I'll be using my permanent rose with a touch of my sap green to take away that brightness. This is the color I'll be using, that we practiced mixing earlier. Let's just practice this technique quickly. Grab a scrap of watercolor paper, start with your color. A fairly pigmented mix of whatever color you're using and paint a nice thick line and then wash that paint off, take off the excess on the side of the jar and then run this underneath the paint. It doesn't have to be next to it all the way along. It can just touch it at a couple of points. While that is still wet, we can pick up some more paint and paint another line underneath. You can also just gently touch the paintbrush at the point where it meets the one above to push an extra bit of paint through. You should start to see some lovely soft blends as the paint and the water merge together. If you want to practice this more, then pause the video here and go ahead. Let's start our project now. We'll start with our more concentrated mix first. These lines don't have to be neat, so don't worry about that. Then dip your brush in the water, wipe off the excess and add it underneath. Then we can go back to our paint and keep alternating these strokes between using the paint and the water. I love this technique because it can be so unpredictable and you're really just letting the water color do its own thing and watching how it reacts. You can see, as you keep going, the ones at the beginning will still be moving ever so slightly until they dry. You have to work fairly quickly to make sure the layer above is still wet when you're adding the next one, but I still find these incredibly relaxing. For the simple strokes and for just watching the paint as the strokes bleed into each other. You can just keep working all the way down to the bottom alternating these lines. That one was so simple and quick, but this effect is so lovely, it is one of my favorites. Now we can wait for that to dry and remove the masking tape. For this bookmark, I'll be adding the words, "let go". We are done. I'm so looking forward to seeing all of your projects and what colors you've chosen, and to hear what you've enjoyed. Please remember to share your work with us. Next we'll be using the same kiss technique for some circles.
15. Project 7: Circles - Kiss Technique: For this project, we'll be using the kiss technique to paint circles. We'll be painting different size circles, some next to each other, so they bleed into each other. We can also add some splatters, which I'll show you how to do at the end of the class in a separate video. We can practice this technique first using the circles. Pick up some of your concentrated paint. I'll be using my tail mix for this one, and paint a circle. Then just dilute your brush and then paint another circle next to it, slightly touching. Now we can pick up our dark mix again and add another circle. I'm going to start with the outline and filler end and then we can push the paint towards the paler circle to make the paint bleed into it. One thing you might want to be careful of is having really harsh cauliflower marks with this when there is too much water pushing the paint away, creating really hard, quite unattractive lines. Let's start again with our darker paint and I'll show you, what you might want to try and avoid. This time I'm going to load my brush with lots of water and I'm not even going to dab this on the side very much. I know that it's got a lot of water in there. If you now paint a lighter circle and push this water towards the dark circle, I'm just going to add a little more to just to demonstrate this, you can really see how it's going to push the paint inwards. A little of this can look nice but if there's a lot of water, then it can look really quite harsh. It's just something to bear in mind. It's happening a little bit with this one too. For this one, I'll be doing a bookmark. So grab your template and let's start painting this one. Let's start at the top with a fairly dark mix and paint our first circle. Dip your brush in the water, take off the excess, and then starting from the edge, I'm going to pull the brush away and they should pull the paint in the direction of this new circle, rather than pushing the water back into the paint. There's quite lot of paint in there. I want it to look lighter. So I'm going to go back in and lift some of that off so that there's a nice contrast between those two circles. Now we can pick up some more paint for a darker circle. I'm going to make this a bit smaller and I'm going to push that paint towards a lighter circle so the paint bleeds into it. I find it quite nice to have groups of two or three, possibly even four, but we can always add the odd circle in on it's own as well. Let's add one up here at the top. We can lift this off just to give a nice contrasts within this circle, going from that darker blue on the top left to this pale area on the bottom right. Now we can paint a slightly larger circle underneath these ones and we'll make this a little lighter. Now we can pick up a slightly more concentrated mix for a smaller circle next to this, so start with the circle and push the paint into it. If it hasn't got as much bleed as you want it to, you can just pick up a little more pigment and just push it into the edge that's touching. Next I'm going to go for an even darker one next to this one. Now let's go for another fairly large circle on this right edge. Now I'm going to pick up a really concentrated mix and push that into the bigger circle. Then now I'm pretty much dishes in water for the circle underneath. There's enough pigment in that circle above to get some color to this one. I'm just going to touch at that edge and pull it out with the water on my brush and then just lift any excess off if you need to. I'm going to do one last circle, a really big one at the bottom connected to this group. Next let's go for a small dark circle away from this left edge and this one can just stand on it's own because there's a nice gap there. We can fit two more in this gap. Start with a paler circle for this time and now I can add a darker circle touching this one, and then just push the paint into it. Now just have a look and see if you have any gaps that you want to add the odd circle into. I'm going to add one here on the right, and then one at the top. You can see this bigger circle on the right has got this fairly hard line now that is dried, I'm going to attempt to fix that. I'm going to cover these with a thin layer of water and then add some more paint to them. I wouldn't always recommend doing this, it's quite risky and can look quite bad if you mess too much with it. To give it back some of that contrast, I'm going to add a little dark paint to that smaller central circle. I'm now finished, when that's dry, remove your masking tape, then we can add our lettering. For this one I'm going to add word happy, I'll also add some light paint splatters to this one. If you want to see how I do this, you can head to the video near the end. I hope you've enjoyed this one. This style is one of my favorites along with the next one where we'll be painting squares in this style using the kiss technique.
16. Project 8: Squares - Kiss Technique: For this project, we'll be painting squares using kiss technique like in the last project. So here are a couple of examples for you. So again, these grands will be touching each other and creating these lovely soft blends. For this, I'll be using my Polaroid template, and my blurry green mix, using my Windsor blue red shade and my Windsor lemon. I'll be using my Size 6 round brush for this one. We'll be painting really simple soft squares like we did in Project 4. They're not going to be really sharp or have ready straight edges. So let's start in the top left corner with a fairly concentrated mix. Then we can dilute our brush in our water, and then just touch it at the corner and pull it down into another square. You can lift a little of this paint off to help give it that contrast between the darkest squire and this light one if you want to. Just make sure your brush is fairly dry when you're doing this. Now we can add another dark one at the top and just push that paint gently, ever so slightly into the corner of that lowest squire. Again, going for a more diluted brush now, we can add another square right next to this one so that paint will bleed in. I'm going for another dark one now, so I'm just alternating these valleys as we go along. I'll add a tiny bit more blue into this one, and add it next to this pale one. By varying both the value on these colors slightly, we just create this lovely interesting effects over the whole piece. You can see how that's bleeding in softly. If yours is a bleeding in too much, then you may have too much water. So you just try and take off the excess water in your brush before painting. Now I'm going to add a dark one underneath this, and push some of the paint towards it so it bleeds in. I'm going to make this slightly more green-blue now and add this next to this, but not touching. Now we can add a pale square next to this touching this one, and just pick up any access with your paint as you need to. Now I'm going to go for another darkest square at this left edge. A bit more blue this time. We can add a diluted square underneath this one, and pour some of that paint out. I'm going to pick up my excess again. Next I'm going to go for a more greenly-blue mix, a dark one, and add this underneath. I'm going to push the paint into that pale one. I want to make this even darker, so I'm going to add a bit more pigment into it. Using that same mix, I'll do another one next to the pale one, but not touching as it's already got a fair amount of blades going into it. Then I'll paint another diluted square next to this one. I'm going for that greenly-blue again. I'm picking up a good amount of paint now, and I'm going to push this into that really pale square. So quite a little bit bleeds in to give it some extra color. Then I'll just add one more pale square at this edge. I can see a little gap at the top, so I'm just going to add the corner of this square and that corner as well, and we finished. So wait until it's dry and then remove the masking tape and we can add a lettering. For this one, I'm going to add the word seizing, and I'm going to do this in a script style. I'll draft it in pencil fast so I can get the position right. Now I'll just go over that in my pen. I'll be adding some light splatters to this one, like with the last project. So if you want to see how I do that, you can head to one of the final videos. I really loved the effect of this one, it looks so soft and calming. I really hope you've enjoyed it. In the next project, we will be painting a geometric pattern.
17. Project 9: Geometric Patterns: For this project, we will be painting a geometric pattern. Here is an example of a bookmark for you. I will actually be painting a polaroid in this video, and I have provided a template view in the resources section if you just want to trace it. For this, I use three different size circles. For my biggest circle, I use some cellotape. For the medium circle, I used a little fun of my paints. You could also use a half jar lid which would probably be about the same size. Then for the smallest circle, I used a lid of some glue. Hopefully you will have sizes similar to these around the house that you can find easily enough. But as I said, you can trace to one for this video, if you just download the PDF in the resources section. I also wanted to show you a couple more examples I did for the style which is slightly bigger. This one is a contained one. I still had the border but I just make sure all of the circles could fit fully inside the square. This one, the circles obviously go off the edge and they end up looking quite different. It depends which one you prefer. These can be quite fun just to send your family or friends, just to get them to try and count how many circles they could find in them. Now, get your polaroid template. If you have traced this from the template or going to, you can skip to the part where we draw on the circles and skip ahead to the painting, and I've added the time to skip to on the screen now for you. We'll start with our largest circles which I use the cellotape for. With this I'm going to add three circles. The second one can be slightly overlapping that first one. Then we can add a third one at the top. Now we can draw a medium size circles using the lid, and I'll add four of these in. Let's start up here on the left, and this overlaps with that large circle. Next, we go for one in this left corner. Let's add one in here overlapping both of these large circles. Then finally I'm going to add one in this bottom right corner. Now we can get our smallest circle and draw the smallest ones in. I can squeeze one in here just overlapping one line without detaching either these two either side. Now let's add one at the top. Then somewhere in this bottom left corner, I'm going to add this over that line. I'm going to add one in this top left corner. Just look where you are positioning this to make sure you're not leaving really thin gaps between circles which are going to be hard to paint. I'm going to add another one at the bottom overlapping these two lines. We can squeeze one up on this edge without touching anything else. Finally, I'm going to add one more in the center here somewhere. I'm going to move that down a bit so it's just overlapping one line. That's our outline finished and now we can start painting. I'll be using sun green for this. I have a little wins of lemon in my palette too so I can vary the mix a bit. I'm going to be using my smallest size 3 so I can make it nice and neat. The way to do this is to start from one corner and then work our way down. I only painting every other space. Let's paint the first shape in this top corner. We'll leave this next one, and then paint the next one beneath it. As we've done with all of these projects, just keep varying nice values to make it look nice and soft. Now we can go back and check what the next one would be. Making sure to leave that space white in-between. Again, working down making sure to skip one, we can continue painting and I'm making this one quite a bit darker. This is a good exercise of practicing to work quite neatly as well. We can keep the shape with these circles. It's a good project if you just want to really focus on painting neatly for awhile, but you don't need to think too much because all we're really doing is painting in the shapes, like a coloring in book. We just need to concentrate on varying our values, making sure we skip every other shape, and of course making sure that we're focusing on our breathing and not holding our breath at all, but taking the slower deeper breaths to make us feel more relaxed. I'm going to stop talking now for this one. See, you might like to put some relaxing music on in the background if you haven't already, and just follow me as we paint the rest of these shapes. Once you finish painting all of the space, leave it for a few minutes to dry and then remove the masking tape. For this one, I'm going to add the word cool. I've added those ideas back up on screen if you want some ideas to choose a different word. I hope you enjoyed that and feeling very relaxed. In the next and final project, we will be painting a heart mosaic.
18. Project 10: Heart Mosaic: In this project, we will be painting a mosaic pectin in the shape of a heart. Here are a couple of examples of some simple mosaics and I quite like this because it looks like a coupled wall with the soft organic shapes, you can also do this in a bit more of a uniformed way using more rectangular shapes but it still works the same in that you're changing the size is through around just to make sure they all fit in together. For this class, we'll be using the style and painting into the shape of a heart. There is a template in the resources section for the Polaroid we'll be painting in this class, which you can trace if you wish, we will be drawing out all the shapes fast, I'll just be painting them. If you prefer to do another coloring and exercise like we did for the last project and that makes you feel more relaxed and please do feel free to throw them out fast. The first thing we want to do is to draw a heart, if you've traced or tracing the template, you can skip ahead to the painting part of this video, which you can see the timing for on screen now. Surfacing you want to do to draw this heart is to find the middle of the page at the bottom and this will give the bottom point of the heart. Then we want to come down and this way from the top at the center, and we can mark that, that will be where the heart dips in the middle. Then basically we want to curve around, hit the top, cover around that corner, come down to that side, and then curve around that bottom point, and then make it symmetrical on the other side. Let's start with the left side, we want to hit the top about here and then hit the side about here, and we can make a mark on the other side too, so it's the same height then we can do the same at the top as well, and then we can draw all of those curves in between each of those points. Then I can bring that down a little more and then bring it down all the way to the bottom, hopefully you should have a fairly symmetrical heart now. The way I painted the heart was to start in the top left corner so I wasn't smudging anything as I move down. I started with some of the dark points and then what I found is really easy to do, once you've got that amount of paint on your brush, was to draw all the areas around the world the same valley so you can have a good range across the whole piece, but not waste any paint by keep washing your brush, I'll show you how I did that as we go along. I'm going to be using my size three, a little bit smaller than some of the others and I'll be using my permanent varies with a little bit of sap green to make that lovely dusky varies, I'm going to start with a good amount of pigment and start at the top left, I'm going to walk around the edge of the heart first with this little shape, and then bringing in wins, sing the same dark makes, I'll add another one in over there. These are going to be uniform, they won't be exactly the same shape or size, they have fairly curved edges and would just be a bit random, especially as we move on, depending how they fit into the gaps, and now I'm just going to dip into the water to dilute some of that pigment in my brush. Make sure you haven't got too much water on that, then I'll just start building this up next to that first one, leaving a thin gap in-between each of these shapes. Again, let's dilute and see if we can get a little bit lighter and add one up next to this one. Now we can add a little more paint and walk around this top edge of the heart until we meet that dark a bit, I'm going to make these one a bit darker and that small paint on top of this one. I'm going to bring this round a little more, now, I've still got a fair amount of paint on my brush, I'll just dilute a little and add another one underneath here. Now we can fill in this little gap here, this one is a bit pink for actually is quite nice to have that variety. Once we've got this fast bit sorted, it's going to be a bit easier to bring it down, let's start just filling in the gaps here now, you can do a giant version of this, like I mentioned earlier. One you could just keep on your desk is an ongoing project which she pickup for 20 minutes a day or whenever you just want to relax some wind painting, something fairly repetitive. It's quite a nice project today, just keep on painting now until you've painted the whole heart,and you can paint along with me, perhaps put some nice relaxing music. I do this. I'll stop talking now for the rest of the project.
19. Adding Splatters: In this video, I'll be showing you how I've added some light splatters to both of these projects. We will start with bookmark. If you want to do the Polaroid, you can skip ahead to the time showing on screen now. I'm using a sheet of printer paper, and I'll be cutting out this area here that I want to add this splatter to so that it can protect the rest of the bookmark. This area is four centimeters by 16.5 centimeters. I'm going to draw the arrow on my paper with a decent space around the edge to cover the bits that I don't want to add any splatter to. Now I'm going to cut this center rectangle out, and to do this, I'm just going to roughly fold it in half to get that first cut, and then I can cut it out. Now, I'm going to lay this over my bookmark, and add a bit of masking tape at the bottom to hold in place. I'm going to use one of my smaller brushes, which are like the paint too, and then another brush which I can tap against to knock the paint off of it. You want to make sure your brush has a decent amount of paint in it, but not full of excess water, otherwise you'll just end up with blobs of water on your page. Then all I'm going to do is just tap the brush with the paint on it on to the second brush, just like this. I'm just concentrating this splatter into the white areas as much as possible. Now we can remove our paper and we have our finished piece. Using the same piece of paper, we can cut out this square for the Polaroid, which is eight centimeters by eight centimeters. Let's measure this out. Then again, just fold this out so we can make our first cut, and then start cutting this out. Place it over the Polaroid, and then add your splatter. There isn't as much white space in this one, so I'm not concentrating it in any particular area. That's our finished piece. In the next and final video, I'll be sharing some final thoughts with you and some ideas for other projects you can do.
20. Final Thoughts: Hi everyone, I want to thank you so much for taking this class, and I really hope you've enjoyed it. I'd love to know which one was your favorite project, which exercises you found the most relaxing, and which colors you chose for your projects. So please do let me know when you're posting your projects because I really would love to see your work and hear your thoughts. Here are a few other ideas of projects you can do with these Polaroid or book templates. The first one in the top left corner is that really simple exercise that we did at the beginning of the class in the exercises video, and I just loved the effect of it. You can also paint waves and circle outline to using the kiss technique, creating this hypnotic effect. Hearts are another great shape which we haven't covered and in that middle bottom Polaroid, it's a simple twist on those geometric ones we did. For this, I just use my fine black pen and drew some squiggles on the page and then painted every other shape in like we did with the geometric pattern, and it was just really relaxing. So just make sure if you're going to do that one, then you use a water resistant pen. Finally, you can do negative painting. I may do a simple class on that in future if people would like it. That's it for this class. I would love it if you would leave me a review. I read all of your feedback and I always mean so much to me and I take them on board so I can always work on improving my classes for you. Stay relaxed and enjoy your painting. See you soon
Sharone Stevens, Watercolour, Illustration & Lettering
