Transcripts
1. Introduction: L. Do you have nostalgic memories of weaving
paper from your childhood? Have you ever wondered how to use this technique in
your adult art practice? Hi, I'm Elizabeth and welcome to my class woven
watercolor paintings. I'm a professionally trained
artist and art educator, as well as a published
author illustrator, and I recently added
to my publications by adding for all
ages coloring book, featuring the dinosaur
illustrations from my children's book. I've been teaching on
skill share since 2020, sharing art techniques
that I love, different artistic practices,
creative approaches, and really kind of anything
that's getting me excited in the art making world that
I can then turn into a class to hopefully excite
my students as well. In this class, we
are going to be exploring the nostalgia of
the basic paper weaving, something that we
probably all did as children at some point in
our elementary journey. Now we're going to elevate that. We're going to do some
watercolor textures to really create some beautiful embellished paper that we're going to then weave together to create really
beautiful woven paintings. I'm also going to show
you how you can add some mixed media details
to take these pieces even further as we elevate the
basics of paper weaving to create your own unique
woven watercolor paintings. This class is intended for creatives that
are a little bit more advanced or who want to expand their creative approach in ways that maybe they
haven't considered so far. By the end of this
class, you will have revisited the nostalgia
of paper weaving. You will have learned some
new watercolor techniques to create embellished papers. You will have learned
how you can incorporate those into a woven
painting process. And learn how you can take
it even further by adding mixed media details to elevate your woven paintings
to the next level. I hope you'll join me in
this really fun class where we do a nod to our past as young creatives as we leap forward into the future
in our creative journey.
2. Class Project: Thanks for joining me.
For our class project, we are going to be exploring some basic watercolor
techniques that you can use to embellish and kind of add some texture to
your watercolor papers. Then we'll be looking
at the basics of weaving that you may
remember as you were a child all the way up to some more advanced
techniques and kind of some
different intricacies that you can use
in your collages. We'll talk about different
color combinations and composition considerations
as we elevate weaving paper. After we've created
our woven paintings, we will take a
look at some mixed media approaches that
you might want to consider adding to
your woven paintings to elevate them even further. And give them kind of their
own spice and uniqueness. It's always so fun to see how everyone's class
project turns out. So be sure to take photos along the way of your
process and kind of share the watercolor techniques that you use and colors
that you work with, as well as your
finish class project. So we can share all
of those over in the student gallery
and get inspired by each other's work
and get new ideas for additional approaches
to our class project. Let's head it over to the
next lesson to talk about what art supplies
you're going to want to have on hand for class. See you there.
3. Materials: Now let's take a look
at what art supplies you're going to want to
have on hand for class. The first couple are must have, and then there's also a list on the class description of
some optional ones that you might want to
consider pulling out for the mixed media optional
part of our class. The supplies for
our class project are fairly straightforward, and then there's a
bunch of optional ones depending on how you want to embellish and really push the mixed media side of
your woven paintings. The very basic ones
we're going to need are watercolor paper. I'm going to be using
nine by 12 Kanson, but any watercolor paper that
you have will work great. We are going to be
cutting into this and weaving so you want to have it be a sturdy enough paper that you can manipulate
it pretty easily, but also not so thin that it's going to tear
when you start weaving the strips into the slit
sheets of the other paper. So nine by 12 is a
great size to work. We can always cut it down and go smaller for our weavings, but this will give you lots of options when it comes to
our decorative paper. We're going to need watercolors, we're going to need a
container for water, a cloth, and watercolor brushes. All of our watercolor
approaches are going to be wet and wet and very large
washes of bold juicy color. Larger brushes like
these will work great. You're going to want
to have plastic wrap wax paper and kitchen
towel on hand for the three different variations of watercolor techniques we're going to use to texturize our paper ahead of turning
them into weavings. After that dries, we're going to get into the
weaving part of it. You're going to want to
have scissors or an exacto. To cut your strips for
your watercolor paper. It's not a bad idea to
also have a ruler on hand, just to help those be straight. If you like, you can always
draw them ahead of time on the backside of the paper just to make
sure they're even, deciding however you
want to go about it. But if you like particularly
straight lines, a ruler would be a
good option to grab. We're going to want to
have a glue stick on hand to secure the strips so
they don't wiggle on us. Then after we've done the
weaving part of the project, you're going to have the
option to go back into your woven watercolors with any mixed media
techniques you want to. So I like to have on hand a
sharpie and a fine liner. I love having some pastas or other paint markers
around because they go really well with watercolor and just give you
that nice bold color. Colord pencil works really great going back into watercolor
paintings with that. You could have yarn,
you could add beads. You could add other fabric
strips and materials. You could do crayon, oil pastel. Really the sky is the
limit when it comes to the mixed media portion and options with
our class project. So this is a mix of the essentials that we're
going to need to create our decorative
watercolor papers and to turn them into
woven paintings, and then a few extras
to consider as you move into the optional
adds for the project. Some time to get your
watercolor materials out as we move on to the next lesson in
class. I'll see you there.
4. Plastic Wrap Technique: I love doing watercolor
texture work, so I'm super excited
to incorporate that into our woven
watercolor paintings. For our first technique,
we are going to explore different
textured approaches that you can create
with plastic wrap in three different ways. So depending on how you
manipulate your plastic wrap, we'll determine what kind of texture it creates.
So let's get started. So for this
watercolor technique, we're going to be
using plastic wrap, and we're going to do it in
three different applications. But the very first step is
to start with wet on wet. So we're going to wet our paper. And because we know we're
going to be cutting these up and turning these
into woven paintings, we want to kind of think about what colors we want to have. Now, we don't have to use the same technique in a
single woven painting. The variety is
really, really nice. So I'm going to
kind of think about what colors I've already created and what other things
I might want to work with. So, for example, in
this woven painting, it was a straightforward process as far as the weaving part goes. I used a warm and a cool and then I went for a
neutral that related. So an orangy brown, which is then the orange is
a complement to the blue. It's a nice play of complimentary colors and also offsetting a warm and a cold. When I did this one, it's kind of funny because
I was doing warm and cool again unintentionally. I just kind of created
two similarish paintings, and then when I chopped them up, they ended up being
contrasting ones. So if I think of the papers
that I've created already, I have kind of this
pinky orangy muted one, and then I've got a green one. So I think what I'm
going to do is I'm going to play
around with some of the other colors
that I've got in my palette so that I can
have a lot of color variety. You can also do a very
understated one kind of sticking very similarly. Like, you know, the reds are
a compliment to the green. So maybe what I want to
do is kind of focus more on creating a very warm weaving
or a very cool weaving. I'm not sure yet. But I
think what I want to do is I want to just give myself
a lot of paper options, knowing that I love having
decorative paper around. It wouldn't be bad to have more. I'm going to go ahead and keep
wetting this just to make sure that it's ready to
take all of the paint. So with any of these
texture techniques, we want to make sure that
we have really juicy color. So I'm going to go ahead and make sure that my
paper is nice and wet. And then I'm going to actually go for another
warm one, I think. I'm going to kind of
go for maybe a rod. A little bolder on the red side. Now, any colors that are going to mix well together
are going to be great. I do have a tiny bit of blue
that has snuck into my red. So actually, I'm going to
change course a little bit, and I'm going to go
ahead and make this one its own analogous color scheme. So analogous colors are colors that are next to each
other on the color wheel. So for this one, I've got red. This is going to end up making some red violet and then violet. So three to five colors
next to each other. As long as the colors are near each other
on the color wheel, they're going to blend
really nicely together. It's a good way to know mixing wise with water
color or paint in general, what colors are going
to go well together. Now, my paper is not super thrilled with my
watercolor tonight. I think this is actually
a mixed media paper that I labeled as
watercolor, but that's okay. It's gonna be fine to have
the ripples happening. Alright, so three ways
for plastic wrap. So the first thing I
want to do is and you can tear these off in advance and have a bunch of
them stacked up, or you can do it as you go. As long as your
paper is nice and wet and you load
up a lot of color, it'll be fine to kind
of pause for this step. So you want to get some
plastic wrap sheets. I'm actually going to tear
off a couple while I made it, then I'll have them for the
next page I'm going to do. Alright. So one way to do it,
there's three ways. One way to do it is I'm going
to cut this even smaller. I want to show you
a really cool one. This is one of my favorite
ways to do plastic wrap. So having more of
a narrow strip, and then you pull
it and stretch it, and then you get these you
get more linear effect to it. It's going to be a little funny because of the way
this is bubbling. But I think if I put a book down on top of
it while it's drying, I think it'll kind of
help with that situation. But it could also
still be really cool. Sometimes when you let the paper do what the paper wants to do, you get something even cooler than what
you were going for. So with any
watercolor technique, it's often a good idea to
just kind of listen to your materials and follow what their natural
inclination is. So we'll see. We'll
see when this one dries, how it looks. So I'm stretching
them nice and long. And then scrnching
and pushing it down. So then, I'm going
to go ahead and put a book on this because I really
want more of that effect. So anywhere the plastic touches, it's going to kind of
push the pigment out. You can already see there's kind of a striation going on here. So that one's gonna
sit like that. Then we're gonna go over
here for this one. Whoops. Always make sure you
wash your brush. But luckily, we're just
making texture papers, so it doesn't really
matter so much. Alright, for this one, I'm
going to go ahead and do some blues I don't
have blues going on, and that might be really
nice to have as an option. That could look
good with my green, that could look
good with this one. Remember, you can also do the same color schemes for
all of your textured papers, and it could also
just, you know, be lighter and darker
values of one color. I am going to pop
another actually, I'm gonna pop another
blue in here, see if I can get some
of this light blue. No, it doesn't want
to be different. Okay. What we're gonna do is we're going to
go ahead and pop in some green and
change this one up. And somewhere in my palette, I think I have a teal, too. But as long as I'm getting a nice juicy color so that I have a lot of pigment for my techniques
to push around, it'll be awesome.
Okay, that's good. So for this one, there's
two other ways to do it. So this is kind of the
way that I invented. Maybe I didn't invent it,
but I didn't I've never seen anyone do it anywhere else. So I like to think I invented the stretch at long ways one. So this one I'm going
to do half and half so I can show you both
of the techniques. So the way I originally
learned this was just to kind of
bunch it up ahead of time and then squash it down, and it creates that kind
of stained glass effect. Sort of, kind of. Another
way I recently learned in the last six months
that does something similar is where you have
your sheet of plastic wrap. And without scrunching it up, you lay it down flat, and then you scrunch it up
well it's on the paper. And that's kind of fun
because you can get even more texture
that way sometimes. It looks very similar to that. So you might not see
a lot of difference, but it's really satisfying
to kind of scrunch up the plastic wrap and keep scooching it in and get more
and more sections of color. So then I'm going to go
ahead and let this dry, and then I will take off
the plastic wrap and show you what these look
like once they're dry. But I am going to go ahead
and put a book down on this one so that I can really try to get as much
of that effect as possible. So now my plastic wrap
technique sheets have dried, so we're going to go ahead
and carefully peel off the White so we can truly see what we've
got going on here. I as I said, plastic wrap is one
of my favorite ways to work with watercolor
to create texture, and it can be used in
so many different ways. I often use it abstractly, but you can use it
with earthy tones, with the pull texture to kind
of get a nice wood green. This can be really
lovely if you're doing a background if you
want for a floral or if you want to add some
texture to some leaves or if you're capturing
water or ice or snow. Or even an interesting sky. Like if you really
start to think about the different ways and
what the possibilities, it's really, really fun. And I to incorporate ink back
into these kind of using the edges that have been
created by the plastic wrap and the pigment to really
bring those to life. You can also go back in
with colored pencil. I've done that
before to really add some nice additional
dimension and contrast value. So these are going to be fantastic paper options for
her watercolor weavings, but we have one more plastic
wrap technique to explore. So I'm gonna go
ahead and tape down another sheet of paper so
that we can do that one. So all plastic wrap techniques start out with the wet on wet. So I'm going to grab
a nice big brush and I'm gonna get my paper Nice and wet. The
great thing about these techniques with
a plastic wrap is that I can reuse
the plastic wrap. I've got two sheets
already torn off from my last demonstration. I'm going to go ahead
and reuse one of those. Sometimes it does pick up
the pigment and it can transfer that and reactivate
it with the wet surface. I'm not going to worry
about that too much here. Actually, the
plaster grab doesn't look like it has
too much pigment on it, amazing. All right. I'm going to go ahead
and play around in the land of warm juicy colors. The more pigment
you put down for any of these texture techniques, the more exciting textures
you're going to get. The more play your
watercolor is going to have. Just letting it mix on the page. I got some crazy stuff
happening in my tray. I've got some blue that
snuck into my red, which has been problematic and I keep forgetting to
do something about that. But hopefully let that be
a happy accident here. But blue and orange
are compliments. So when those two mix, we get a neutral brown. I'm just going to do a
little extra scrubbing to try to get some of that blue pigment to
disappear a little bit. This is a good reminder to anyone who's having
some color sneak in when they're working to take some time to clean
your palettes now and then. Because our colors
do get contaminated with other colors,
which is okay. Sometimes some neat
things come out of that, but sometimes you get
this weird stuff. For this last plastic
wrap technique, for this one, we want
it to be pretty flat. So I'm going to go ahead
and flatten it back out, and I'm going to lay
it down on my paper. Pretty flat. Now I can leave it like this and let
that do its thing or I can sprinch it up on the paper and have even
more texture happen. Then I can use some of my other extra sheets and do
the same thing down here. It's going to look similar
to that first technique. But you do tend to get
even more texture marks when you do the crinching here. If you're really looking
for some fine detail and extra texture, this can be a great approach. Now you squash it down. So we're getting as
much surface touching the plastic graph as
possible, and we let it dry. And you can see that blue is really bleeding
and kind of being weird. But the fact that we're going
to cut this up and turn these into weavings, I think
it's going to be okay. And I could always
just ignore that or use this section for
something else later on. Or maybe when I go back
to do my weavings, I'll decide not to use
this paper at all. I like to have a lot of
different options so that I can in the moment of the
next stage of this project, I can pull from those and see
what I'm in the mood for. I'm going to let this
dry and then we'll see how that looks when
it's all done. All right. Now my ta plastic wrap
scrine technique is dry, so I'm going to go ahead and
peel off my plastic wrap. And this is pretty
great. I love this. Now let's compare it
to the other ones. So we have the one over here
where we stretched it long ways and made sure
that we picked up some of that
horizontal lines. And then this is the one where I scrinched it and put it down. There's not a ton of
difference between these two, and I think because I
scrnched it on the paper, I think, and I was using multiple sheets of
plastic wrap to do this. There's some areas
where it didn't get the texture like it does down here and up here in the corners. So I actually think I have more consistent texture with the scrnching it up and
then pressing it down versus the lay it
flat and scrnch it up. But if I had been a little
bit more conscientious of the scrinching and played with maybe three sheets or just one really big
sheet of plastic wrap, and then scrincht I could have gotten more consistent texture. But the goal wasn't
consistent texture. The goal was try plastic wrap in three different
approaches and see how it turns out so that
we can add this into our watercolor and mixed
media collage practices, as well as to create some fun decorative papers
for our watercolor weavings. I would say we
accomplished that mission. Like I said, I did
have that weirdness with the blue sneaking in from my palette so
I'm probably, you know, go to find a way to use this paper without
this just because it doesn't I can make this look interesting
in another project, but probably not my weaving. We're kind of going for
a nice even consistency across our weaving. So, may I go ahead
and set these off to the side and get ready
for my next one.
5. Wax Paper Technique : This technique starts very
similarly to plastic wrap. We're still going to
be working wat on Wat. But this time, instead of
putting down plastic wrap, we're gonna be putting down
wax paper or deli paper. So let's get to it. So wet
your paper really well. Get it nice and juicy, using a great big brush. And then you're going
to start dropping in a ton of beautiful color. Really think about what colors are going to
blend well together. I'm going to do two
for this technique. I've got one that's going
to start out with greens, warm greens, cool greens, and just play around with that. As I'm considering colors for each of my
decorative papers, I'm aiming for a
rainbow of pages. I really want to have some
interesting color combinations that I can pull from
later for my weavings. So by having a
little bit of each of the main colors
or color families, that will give me lots
of beautiful variety, as well as some nice unity
across color schemes. For this first round,
I'm just going to peel off a great big
sheet of wax paper. You could also use deli paper, anything that kind
of has that, like, waxy consistency to it. And then I'm just going
to touch it down. Anywhere it touches,
it's going to pick up the texture
of the wax paper. Well, that dries, I'm
going to do another one. So I'm wetting my paper again. This one I'm going to go with
warm tones, warm colors. So I'm going to pop in some red, red oranges, fiery earthy tones, just to give me a little
bit more variety, again, in my color options when I
go to the weaving stage. This one I decided to pop
in some yellow ochre too. And then I love putting in
some pinks with my reds, especially the sort of
plummy purply pinks, make a really nice compliment
to those red tones. For this technique, I'm going to take the
sheet of wax paper, and I'm going to tear it up into small bits and lay down
those individual pieces. So I'm going to have a wet on wet bleed of colors anywhere
I don't put the wax paper. And then anywhere I do have it, it's going to pick
up the beautiful texture from the paper itself. So you could do this in
a lot of different ways. You can play with scale here
where you have small pieces, big pieces. They can overlap. You could go for
more of a pattern, but I know I'm going to
cut this up in some way, shape or form for my weaving, so I don't really want to bother too much
with how I do it. The ultimate goal is to have texture across the
entire sheet of paper. Now we're gonna let these
papers dry while we move on to our third and final
watercolor texture technique.
6. Blotting Technique: This technique begins
the same way that the plastic wrap and
the wax paper worked. But this time, we're going to be using paper towel
or kitchen roll. So you're going to start with a what on what approach again, and then depending
on the pattern that your paper towel has, that will impact the way that the texture ends up looking
on your watercolor paper. So this is a really, really
fun one. Let's get to it. So now, this
watercolor technique is going to start
out wet on wet. And then we are
going to be using paper towel or kitchen
roll to do some blotting. The cool thing about
paper towel and kitchen roll is that it has
different patterns on it. So this one, I don't know if
you can really tell has kind of radiating hexagon
shape coming out of it. This one has kind of like
a spattered dot technique. Here's one. It's better to see. There's kind of an oval, like a football
shape in the middle, and then it's got
diamonds around it. Which is really interesting. And then this one is
just kind of a nice, even this one this is
the same as that one. But what I just noticed is that when I use the other side, it has a different pattern to it, kind of more
of an even one. And sometimes the
pattern goes through. So the one where I have
the biggest roll of it, the pattern goes
through to both sides, but it is different because it's kind of pressed in there. And then this one has a
different pattern depending on which side of the paper towel or kitchen roll
that you're using. So you can really do some
interesting things with paper towel or kitchen roll because you've got some
different patterns to blot up. So let's get our
paper painted so we can explore those patterns. So the first step is
to wet our paper. Like I said, we're
going to do wet on wet. I've got two sheets taped
down so that I have lots of surface area to explore
paper towel blotting with. But they do they are going to
be pulling up the pigments, so we do want to
make sure that we put down a lot of pigment. I'm going to go ahead and
just wet both of them at the same time because once I get to placing the
paper towel pieces down, it goes really fast. I love color, so I really just love laying down a lot
of wonderful color. And then seeing where
things go after that. Now, I am using
mixed media paper just because that's what
I happen to have nearby, and it is rippling in
very strange ways. But I think it's going
to be okay for this. I'm going to go ahead
and I'm going to tear off a sheet of this and I'm just going to let it to lay it
down and press it. Then anywhere the surface of the paper towel touches
the watercolor paper, it's going to pull up the
pigment and this one, you're going to
see it right away. So you can peel it off and
get more of that soft effect, or we can leave it on there. Because this is an
absorbent surface, unlike the plastic wrap, this one is going to pull
some of that pigment. So if you use a very pale
application of watercolor, you're going to get very soft, subtle patterns that translate you can see how much pigments
getting pulled up there. But the effect is really cool. I could go in with more
pigment if I wanted to to get more intense. I can also only blot in some spaces versus
blotting the whole sheet. So now let's go to this one. And let's see, for this one, we've done a lot of Let's go
for a really bold yellow. I'm using a lot of pigment with the yellow because I still
want my effect to show up. I think because I
have some kind of orange ones as far as
the papers I've made, this one I'm going to
let it be yellow and green and kind go for
some lime colors. And then I recently refilled
my yellow and my lime green, so there's some juicier
pigment to work with there. So I need to do a little bit more swirling carefully loading up my brush because it's
picking up globs of the paint. So that starts to
happen if you're picking up like
chunks of pigment, just spend some more
time in your palette, kind of swirling it around so that you can really
get it to merge with the water and go into its painting form and
not its more solid form. I'm gonna wash my brush. I'm gonna get some more yellow. That's good. Now, let's play
with other paper toe I have. So this one has the two
different prints on the side, so I'm going to
do half and half. So this is part experiment, but part also it still gives me a piece of
paper that I can use for my weaving. Let's see. That one I put down
the bumpy side. This one I'm going
to flip it upside down and do the other side, let's check this
one. Pretty dynamic. He says, You can tell
where it didn't press. I've got the white
section here and the pigment still
there, which is great. This one, see? There you go. If I peel this off, we can see the very
different texture between one side of the paper
towel versus the other. This paper towel one was pretty much the
same on both sides. I can use that to kind
of pick up my green. And actually, I can
fix that little spot by kind of putting in
some more pigment, and then I can get
my paper towel out. And I can just blot.
That smudge away. I've got some other weird stuff happening here. Some blooms. Some blooms were happening. So, play around with different
kinds of paper towel. You'll never look at paper
towel the same again. The same would go for napkins that have a pattern pressed into them or
design pressed into them. Any material that has that and has that absorbent fabric to it, you know, or fibers will be able to pull the pigment up
and leave behind designs. So it's a really, really fun, really easy way to get some very interesting papers for any project that you
might have going on. So give this one a try. I can't wait to see
how it turns out, and let's head on over to the next lesson to
take a look at how we are going to
begin thinking about turning papers like
this into weavings. Now that we're done with our watercolor
portion of the class, feel free to put away all
your watercolor supplies, let those papers dry, and then we'll head on
over to the next lesson to begin looking at paper weaving
techniques. See you soon.
7. Weaving Techniques Part 1: Paper weaving is an art
form that has really gone from everything as elementary as elementary school
art projects. I can remember doing a paper weaving in
elementary school, and then I think the
teacher laminated it, and it became kind
of a placement that we got to bring home. That was really fun. It was
really exciting at that age. But as adult artists, we kind of want to elevate
that a little bit. But that doesn't
mean that tried and true basic weaving
techniques can't look gorgeous in our
adult art practice. So let's take a look at
some different approaches to weaving paper. Alright. So before we dive into
doing some woven paintings, we're going to just kind
of review the basics of weaving as you consider
what choices you want to make a once you
start cutting into your decorative watercolor
papers, there's no going back. There's also lots of
ways we can work with the Oss and the Oos that happen
in any artistic process. But let's do some basic
practicing first. You can do this on
just white copy paper. I wanted to make sure that you could really see
it well in film, so I decided to use some
construction paper for this. So what you're going to do
is at its most basic level, we'll explore paper weaving, which will hopefully bring back some pleasant memories
of doing this when you were a child or
perhaps give you some fun, new basic ways you can approach weaving with
paper for the future, as well as incorporating it into what we can do
with our painted papers. So what you need to do is pick at least two
different papers that one is going
to be the paper that you cut your slits into, and then one you're
going to turn into your strips of paper. And then depending on
how you want to do it, you can weave the long way. So you can have
your strips go the long way down and have
a vertical format. And then if you're going
to do that, you want to cut your paper the short way. So whatever way these
cuts are going to go, then these are going
to go the opposite. And then vice versa. So this one is
going to be if it's going to be a
horizontal weaving, then when it's in
horizontal mode, I'm going to cut vertical
stripes this way, going along the short edge. And then the strip paper is
going to be cut the long way. So let's actually do that. The first thing we're
going to do is you don't have to bend
your paper for this, but it is nice because then
you end up with even cuts. So if you bend it and you just give it a
tiny little pinch, when we do our
cutting for our loom, this is essentially
becoming our loom paper, we're going to want to
make sure that we cut from the folded edge up to the top, but not all the way through. I will show you in
a bonus video how you can weave just strips
of paper together, and that can be super cool. But that's a little
bit more challenging. So I wanted to start
with the foundations of paper weaving and
then we can build up towards some more advanced
techniques as we go. Starting with my scissors, I'm going to cut folded edge
up to but not into the top. Then I'm just going to do a really straightforward
one for this. You could measure
it out in advance, but I'm just going to eyeball it and get it to
be pretty close. Then there's all sorts of different ways we can vary this. We can cut them zig zig, we can cut them in
a wave pattern. We can vary their sizes. But I highly recommend that you practice this step either as a new technique that
you're learning or a review if it's been a while since you've done
some paper weaving. And then we're going
to go ahead and open it up and kind of flatten it out and kind of get
this to go back the other way so it
lays nice and flat. And now we have our loom. So because I'm going to be
weaving through it this way, I want my paper to
be that direction. So I'm going to go ahead and cut some strips of the purple. This is where you can
also get a little experimental with how
you do your cuts. If you want to measure
this out ahead of time, if you want to draw
on the backside of your watercolor
paper, you can. You can do whatever
you want to to make the technical aspect of this class project and this technique to work with your own artistic
sensibilities. I don't mind if it's
a little funky and a little wonky and I'm going to save some experimentation for later when I get into
my watercolor papers. But we're gonna cut
everything into strips. This is where you can also use
more than one color paper. And so you can kind of
play around with it. But again, this is
our very basic one. I'm gonna scoot these
off to the side. So now what you do is, it's an under over under over. I'm going to go
under the first one over the second one,
under the third one, over the fourth one,
under the fifth one, over the sixth one, under the seventh one, and
over the eighth one. That is my one strip. Then I'm going to scoot you
all the way up to the top. You can also figure
out if you're more comfortable weaving left
to right or right to left. I'm right handed, so
controlling it from the right side feels
more natural to me. But that is completely
up to you and bears no bearing on how your
weaving is going to look. Now, you will notice the
first one I wove was under, and then this ended up over. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. If you have a seven if
you have an odd number of slits that you've made
to create your loom paper, you're going to end up with
one under and one over. This could be something that bothers you potentially.
Think about that. If you're planning out your
paper and how you're going to cut your loom, if
you want to end it, so that both ends of
the paper are the same, make sure that you
cut eight times. But we're going to
go every other, so it's going to create a cool alternating
pattern anyway. Now I started under. Now I'm going to
go over and it's always easier to do it a little further down and then
scooch the paper up. I'm going to go under over, under over under over under that one's all
the way through, and then I'm going
to wiggle, wiggle, wiggle using your nails
helps to get it up there. Now, you can also have space. You could have gaps here.
That is totally fine. You know, have something
else going on. You could also when we get
into the mixed media lesson, you're going to see
me incorporating other materials like yarn
and fabric into my weaving, so it's going to
kind of go back and forth between watercolor strip, watercolor paper strips,
and other materials. But for now, straightforward,
this is where we're at. Then in the most basic sense, we're going to go back
to the original one. So we're going to go under
over under over under over. Pop it up under over
and slide it up. Then I'm just going to keep
alternating back and forth until my entire
weaving is filled in. I'm going to go ahead
and speed up the video so you can see what it
looks like in the end. So now you're noticing
that I have extra strips. That's because we have left space at the top and the bottom. Now, I do have some
little extra space down here where my
cuts go farther, but I don't have a
strip that fits that. I could play around with adding in some other strips or
I could just scoot these down and let them be a
little bit more spaced out to kind of fill it all the
way up down to the bottom. So that's something to
think about when you get into your actual weaving. And you can like your
strips even longer. Like, I use two pieces of
paper that were the same size, so I can get my
strips to line up perfectly with the outer
edges of my loom paper, but I could also have
used wider paper, and then I would have ended
up with longer strips, and then that can
kind of be fun, too, to get it to stick
off the edges. Kind of like it would
if we were using an actual loom and weaving
with other materials. So I'm just going
to line up my edges and tuck them so that
they go on both sides. Before we get into the mixed media step in our later lesson, we're going to want to
secure the flaps of this. What I like to do is I
like to just kind of flip up the tab, do a
little bit of glue. Strips and then squash it
down and kind of go along the whole side and then get
every other strip secured. And then spin it around, do the same thing
on the other side so that everything is secure. Just kind of make
sure everything is sticking how you want it to. Then you can flip it over and do the same thing
on the back side. It's not really necessary, but with these flaps
of paper being loose, nothing's going to slide because every single strip has
been secured on one end, but they can get tangled up. You know, as this paper moves around my studio or gets put in and out of
portfolios or handled. So it's just nice to have
everything securely glued down. Don't glue it down
though until you are ready to commit
to your weaving. Because if you do make a mistake along the way in the
weaving process, it's really easy to
pull the sheets out, pull the strips out,
and then start again. So it's really foolproof until you commit
to the glued step. This is the most basic weaving
with straight lines for our loom and straight
strips to weave in and out in and out and then alternating
on how we start each one. So when we do this with
watercolor, it looks like this. The same exact process
here, but I did it here. What I did on this one,
the background paper was with the wax paper,
that's what I used. That would be equivalent to this technique that we
did in our demonstration. Then the blue or the teal, I think I textured that one. I did. I textured it with salt, which is a technique that
we're not doing in this class. But if you're curious
about salt technique, feel free to check out my watercolor and ink
technique class. That has salt is one
of the ways that we decorate and texturize
our watercolor paper. This one is a little
bit different because I left I wove
it the other way, so I cut the strips this way, and then I wove it and I chose
a paper that was smaller. So the blue paper was one where
I trimmed off the border, and it was just a smaller
paper to begin with. But what I liked
about that was I could leave the white
of my watercolor and have it be a nice frame to it because I taped it
and it didn't bleed. So I had a nice
clean edge already. And then I haven't
glued this one. I've let it just be loose, so I can pull these strips
in and out as I want to. So I can go back
into this some more. There's a little bit of
extra space in there. You can see how
there's some gaps. So I didn't I had
the same situation here where I had a little extra
wiggle room with weaving, but that gives me some flexibility for
some other things that I can do to this when we think about the mixed
media step of this. It can start as a very
basic weaving technique, and then we can keep elevating
it as much as we want to. Or you can leave it at
Z's and just say that's a really beautiful abstract,
patterned picture. Let's talk about some other ways that we can do our weavings and get a little bit more experimental in how
we approach it.
8. Weaving Techniques Part 2: Alright. So we're going to do the
same thing and I'm going to show you again on regular paper. This time, I'm going to do
my strips the other way. So the purple is going
to become my loom, and I'm just going to
carefully squash that. I'm gonna keep my slits
in my loom straight, but I'm going to change up how I approach the strips of
paper that I weave into it. And why don't we also add in a variety of colors to
make it even more fun. So remember, we're cutting
on the folded edge and we're cutting or cutting toward a tiny little one I'm
going to sueeze in there. We're cutting toward the edge. We're not cutting up to it. The other thing to
think about is, it seems like it might be
a good idea to do really, really skinny ones and have
a very complicated weave. These cuts were a lot closer together than what I did here. This one's in the middle, but you want to make sure
that you're keeping it manageable because you can
really make it complicated, but then it can also
get overwhelming. Alright, so let me grab
another sheet of paper. Now, we're only going to end up using half of each, probably. So save your strips, 'cause
your extra strips can be really great for other
collage projects. To save time, I'm gonna go ahead and cut these at the
exact same time, and that's gonna give
me some variation. So I'm gonna be weaving
under under the long way. So I want to cut long strips. So I'm going to do some
waves for this one. So small variation, but it's
gonna have kind of a cool, big impact in the long run. You can also do the same
thing with zig zags. I just happen to
like waves better. I'm in more of a
wave mood today. In a zig zag mood. Now I have lots
of strip options. So I'm gonna go This one I'm
gonna start at the bottom. Because we have the
edges of the papers, it's nice to have the edge
if you're going to get a little funky with how you
cut them, have that lineup. I'm going to try to have a straight edge
for this strip and a straight edge on the
top of my last strip. When you start getting
funky with your papers, you have to do a little
bit more work to gently navigate them through the
slits of your loom paper. I get that in there. You could also play around with
doing some imagery. Like it'd be really fun
and layering it up. Actually, that's a
really good idea. This already feels
very landscape, you know, like mountains. Bonus lesson or new
class. I don't know. One way or the other. I just had a really cool idea to do a more controlled weaving. Isn't that great?
Don't you love that? I just love when new ideas and inspiration pops out of nowhere. I wasn't looking for it,
but I am welcoming it, and I'm excited to play
with that idea the next time I have some free
time for some art making. I'll be sure to film it
so I can share it with you down the road. I think it would be cool. All right. Navigate
that through. Now, it's because
of the way I cut the strips and I'm letting
it kind of just random, like grabbing them, they're
not going to totally line up. See this part lines up a fine. But then we have some
gaps here and here and here that I can't
correct, but that's okay. I like that. You can
also play around doing more than one of the same strip and then
kind of going back to it. This is such a small weaving, I'm just going to alternate. There's a lot of different
ways you can vary it. So play around really take some time with the practice
weaving step for this lesson. Of the class and really kind of experiment and see what
you can come up with. And I bet in the long run, it's going to make your
watercolor weavings even cooler. And whatever
experimentation you do, be sure to share that in the class project section because that could be
something that really helps somebody else
troubleshoot or just gives them a whole new idea for ways that they can
approach their weaving, too, which is awesome to get inspired by each other and
share those wonderful ideas. Alright, back to the yellow. I probably only have room for two more strips, and
it's gonna be tight. So actually, I really
want to end on a red. So I'm going to trim this
one down a little bit. That's the other
thing you can do. You can trim your
strips while you're mid weave and kind of make some decisions about
how you want it to go. You can also weave on top of weavings. So I'll
show you that, too. So let's see if we're gonna
navigate this one through. It gets really tight towards
the end of the weaving. So you've got to be a little bit more patient and a little bit more persistent in getting
the papers to go through. I get that one to scooch down. What I want to do is I'm
going to have a red up here. It's going to have to be really, really narrow at the top. But before I do that, I want to show you something
else that's pretty cool. I'm going to scooch
this yellow one in exactly on top of my red one. Well, it could go over too. Yeah. Yeah. We'll
do that instead. So I could weave this underneath so that it's right
on top of the red. Oh, gosh, it would have been if I could take
it out and do it. I could take this strip out. I could glue the yellow to it and I could weave a double strip through. That would
be really cool. Or I can weave this the same way I weave that one or I could play around with weaving
this one and now on top of it and
have it alternate. Oh, it's getting crazy. And have it be its own
kind of overlapping thing. It can either match
the red or it can alternate against
it. I don't know. Either way, I love
it. Let's see. Went under under over, under O. It kind of looks
like it's a mistake, but it was kind of intentional. But I'm gonna go
ahead and fix it. So this is gonna go over Oh, wait, this is just going
under everything. Huh. Alright. Start fresh. Alright. If I go under that one, then
I can go over those three, and then I'm going to
go under this one, and then I'm going to
go over those three, and then I'm going to go under this one and then
I'm going to go over those three and
let it be like that. I like that. Okay. Then I'm going to do the same
thing with this one. So I'm going to cut I need to keep one of my. No, I don't. I'm going to grab
one of these guys, and I'm going to cut it thinner so I can use it in the same way. Alright. I'm going to do the
same thing. I'm going to go under 1/3, under one, over three. Oops, one, two,
three, under one. And over three. So as you get a little bit more experimental and
creative with this, you're going to have to
do some problem solving. But that is the most
fun thing, right? In art to problem solve and
troubleshoot and come up with new cool stuff.
All right, that's cool. Now, I want to potentially do some really
tiny reds over the yellows, but before I do that, I want
to go in with one last red. Let's see. This is
bigger on that side. I'm going to actually weave
this the opposite way. I might find I have to do some
trimming, but that's okay. It's just more problem solving.
And I like a challenge. Alright. Where it's a little
careful not to rip it. Patience, Betsy, patience. Okay. Over under. This is also why
it's really nice to experiment with
just regular paper. And I think if you have, some inexpensive
construction paper, it's not a bad idea to try to do your practice steps with it if you can
just because it's nice to see the
different colors to help clarify the weaving concept that you're experimenting with. We're getting tight.
That's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.
It's going to work. You might just need to scoot
him down for a second. I'm very careful not to
rip or crinkle my paper. Oops. Okay. Now, this is okay. So this guy is stuck. So we're just going
to do a little trim trim off some of that. See if that helps
him fit through. I think it will. Oh,
yeah. We're good now. Alright. Sneak that one through. And one last part. I. Sometimes your paper strips are gonna pop. That's okay. Just have to kind of Oh, it's tight there. That's okay. It's through enough. I
can always trim it off. Alright. This is a
little little funky. That's okay. It's
just a practice one. Because I had so much trouble
getting this guy through, I'm not going to do the
double weaving again. But I like it. It's
a good has kind of a nighttime city feel. And then I've got all
these great strips that I can use for
something else. So definitely don't
get rid of them. Earned a lot on this
one, but it kind of shows you how
you can, you know, troubleshoot and experiment and really kind of play and
see how it's gonna work. And then these will
be great ones to test out some mixed
media techniques on later on before I go
into my watercolor papers. Practice these weaving
techniques and kind of get comfortable
with some scrap paper. Then when you're
all set with that, we'll head on over to the
next lesson, see you soon.
9. Woven Watercolor Papers Demo 1: So now we have
practice our weaving. We have our decorative papers. I've gone through and I've
kind of selected a couple. I think I'm going to go
ahead and use three. So one of them is
going to become my loom paper where I'm going
to be cutting my slits. Then the other two
are going to become the strips that I
weave into that. And I think I think what
I want to do out of that. I think I'm going to use
this for my loom paper, and then these two are
going to be my strips. So I want to go vertical. So I'm going to go ahead and
gently fold this this way. Enough to kind of indicate
where that middle is. And then I'm going
to start cutting. I'm going to keep mine
kind of close together. I want to make this a
little bit more intricate, and I also want to leave
a little bit of room to be able to add some
mixed media elements. So kind of maybe go beyond paper as far as my weaving goes. We'll see. I'm going to try
to keep them pretty even. And then maybe do a really
loose weaving and then maybe weave some
other things like some other fibers or some other kinds of
material in there. I want to leave it open
to really play and have fun with that
step of the project. So I'm going to keep
it fairly traditional as far as my weaving technique. And you'll notice
I did because I didn't squash it down very well, and I kind of let it be
loose, it's a little off. That's okay. It's
going to be fine. So my weaving is going
to be a little skewed. Oh, I've got my strips. I'm going to bend it back the opposite direction
to flatten it out. You can use my exacto
knife and I can just use my ruler and go straight
down like that. I have this relatively
small sized paper cutter. That works pretty great also. So I'm just going to cut up
everything for both sheets. And know that I'm
going to have extra, especially since I'm using
two different kinds of paper. I was going too fast
and I wasn't thinking. So I have actually cut my
strips the same direction as my loom slits. That's okay because I'm just gonna have some
extra hanging off, which I kind of like anyway. When you're doing this,
What sable to you? We were using we hadn't
done that mistake. Make sure that if your paper
orientation is this way, your slits are going this way, turn your paper this
way and then chop it. But I didn't. So we're gonna roll with it, and
it's going to be fine. I can always trim it off
at the ends or I can let it be kind of loose. So I'm just going to go
ahead and start weaving this and kind of get a basic
woven foundation down. See what inspiration
strikes along the way. For ways I want to vary this. You might find out like I did. These aren't evenly
cut up there. So even though I was
being very careful, I didn't cut these as
tall as I did these ones. So what I can do is
I can take this out. I can pull this dock up. And I can take my scissors
and because mine got skewed, I have to be a little
extra careful. I can cut some of
these to go a little higher so that they line
up a little better. Another trick you can do if
you're worried about this on the backside, say, you
have a straight edge, you decide how far
and you want to go, and then you can do a
pencil line and then fold your paper this way and
then cut up to that line. But you can also just not
worry about it too much. So let's get back to leaving. Well, it's really important
to do the practice step and just get yourself
comfortable with it. Alright, I'm gonna
leave some space, and then I'm gonna play around with. I could
go every other. I could make a nice
even pattern there, or I could shake it up a bit. Now, I'm gonna leave
some gaps 'cause I know I want to weave some
other things into this. I haven't quite
figured out what yet. I'm gonna dig around
in the art studio and kind of see what
options I have. But I'm still kind of following the underover
pattern that I've begun, and I might have to move things around a tiny bit since
I'm doing the paper first, and then I'm going
to circle back to add some fiber pieces. But that's okay. It'll all work out in the end. The other thing that's
going to happen because I'm skipping steps, my papers are going
to wiggle around a lot more than they
would otherwise. Like, this is a pretty big gap. I'm probably going to fill
that with more papers, too. But because I'm gapping it, I'm going to end up with
some variations here. And actually, I really
like these warm ones. So I'm gonna add some
more of those in here. And notice I'm just using
my thumb to kind of pop up the next strip that
I'm going to go under. Now, you'll notice
that this is weaving these two strips are weaving the same under over variation, which can be problematic. Now, you can have the gap. You can leave the gap and just let it be open and do that. But that's where
the glue comes in handy to keep your strips
from moving on you. So the basic weaving
is done, I think. So I'm gonna look
around for some yarn, I think, and see
what else I have. Be right back. Found
some solid paper, and I found some yarn. So I want to go with the
yellow and maybe the green. We'll see. I got this chicken
with kind of cool colors. Cool, blue, green
and blue colors. So I'm gonna cut this into
some more long strips. Ribbon would be a really
nice piece to put into this. You could also use
lace strips of lace. If you had any clothes,
some fabrics and clothes, if it was an article
of clothing that you were going to donate or, you know, just were done
with. Let's stop there. It's going to get a little
more complicated as I go. So but I really kind of wanted to treat it as a composition where
I was making, you know, some really
intentional choices and then letting those choices
impact future choices. I really like working
organically and intuitively. And kind of seeing
what new ideas and inspirations come can
come out of things. I do really like this blue. I'm going to scooch this down. And I'm going to do
another one up here. This is where it would
have been helpful to go one at a time. I guess, you know,
thinking back on it, I could have sketched
out this layout. You could absolutely
do that. You could kind of sketch out your pattern, your leave that you're going
to do, do some pre planning. That might be
something I'd try in the future just to give
myself a little bit more a little bit more
intentional preparation. But approaching it
this way is very in line with the way I like
to approach mirror making. I can always scooch
things down like I just did there so that
I can get this piece. Little ones are
hard to maneuver. Sometimes What's going on here? It's there. Just can't
get it to slide over. Helps to flip it over sometimes. Alright. Bank. So you can
get it to keep going. The thinner the paper gets,
the less stiff it is. So I think that's
why it's giving me a little bit of a hard time. Because I'm using yarn, I cut a few strings to this. I'm probably gonna want
to get out a needle. Because getting something like the yarn through when I have all this paper I'm working
with chew is probably going to be a little complicated. I can't find the needle
that I was looking for. So what I'm gonna do is I'm
going to I get very creative. And I'm gonna tape
the end of my yarn to this wooden skewer 'cause
I really just need something small and stiff that I can whoops use to
push this through. It's gonna go under. Let me just scooch these
down a little bit more. Whoops. I watch out
for those thin papers. Alright. So far, so good. This is the stuff where you
want to be really careful not to rick any of your papers. So as long as I'm
gentle and I kind of negotiate the far too much tape I used to initially touch, the yarn will be fine. Almost there. All right. Now, I need to untape the yarn so that I can pull the skewer out without pulling out the yarn that
I just wove through. All right. Hold my yarn. Whoops. Hold the skewer. Yeah. I worked. Whoops. Wow. I almost pulled the
whole thing out. So this is where we
can start to think about those compositional
elements, right? So we have so repetition is good understanding color theory and what colors go together is important and having a color
scheme in mind as we choose our papers and then
any additional materials that you want to
incorporate into your weaving. But you also want to
think about scale. Kind of a variety of widths is nice or
the evenness of it. You know, creating a pattern and the evenness that comes with that repeated design and having that sameness and
creating that scale. Squoosh these down.
Make this part a little easier to do can always
turn your weaving too. Where do I want to go next? Do I want to do another yellow? This is where you can really
start to play, right? 'Cause you can move you can
move your composition around. I don't think I
really want to go for a total mirror between
the bottom and the top. And that's kind of a
fun thing to do is to almost almost mirror it or almost repeat it
and then change it up. It needs to be I mean, it could look like a mistake, and if it is a mistake, that's fine. We're
just embracing it. But it can also be a very intentional kind
of break in a pattern. Play with that, too.
Play with, you know, how can you use repetition but also have a
little bit of asymmetry to it. A little bit of
unexpected happening. So every time I put a new strip in of whatever
material I'm using, I'm constantly reassessing
the decisions that I've made and trying to figure
out what I should do next. It helps to flip and kind of look at it
from different ways. I do want more yellow. I really like that bright pop. So I am going to find some
other places to put it. Maybe it will end
up mirroring that. I don't think I want to
have it even like that. So now I have to figure
out where can I weave this so that it makes sense. I definitely want some
dark green there, and I definitely want more blue. Alright, so this is getting
fairly intricate at the top, and we've got a little bit of that happening at the bottom. But it needs more. It's feeling unbalanced. There's also the
possibility of overthinking one's next decision and really kind of starting
to obsess about it and to the point of stalling yourself in
the creative process. So you have to be a
little bit wary of that. So sometimes you
just have to go with one option and know that
it's going to be fine. So you can move on in
the process. Let's see. Spin it around. We have some evenness
happening. That's okay. I'm going to trim up
my edges a little bit. Especially the yarn. I want this to hang off and be extra. Boy, it feels a little out of control. So I'm going
to just clean it up. So I'm just giving it a haircut, basically, trimming
it all the way up. And then I think I
might do a couple, dobs of glue to
secure the yarn, too. And then we're gonna do the
same thing on the back. It's a basic weaving, right? We we set up our loom paper, we cut some basic strips. I added some scale variation between the strip sizes and the types of papers
that I was using. I used two of my
decorative papers from our watercolor lessons, and then I also used some
solid blue construction paper, and then I added in some yarn. To give it a little bit of a
more exciting texture to it, a little bit more
variation there. What I love about using the decorative
watercolor paper is that the texture just adds a
whole other element to it. So if we look at our
practice things, so here is, you know, the tandar that you would do in an elementary weaving
lesson or a craft project, you know, a camp, and
just really basic, right? We had a loom paper, we
had strips, we wove it. This is the exact same
weaving technique, but this is so much more elevated because we
treated our paper first, and we really considered
not just color. I mean, color is a choice here because I was using
different colored papers, but we were considering
value relationships. We've got some really nice
contrast happening between the lighter decorative paper and the darker decorative paper, and then I popped that
even further by grabbing the construction paper
that was pulling from the darkest values
in my watercolor. Then I added some
interesting visual elements by playing with the yarn with the paper and
then the scale of the very skinny strips
with the wider strips. You could take that to a much bigger extreme
if you wanted to. This project is a
really fun thing to take something
that is so enjoyable, apply it to paper
versus yarn weaving or using a thread or using a
loom or any kind of fibers, which we can still
incorporate fibers into it. But it is a really fun way to rethink about how we can use our papers and our paintings to make some really
interesting, beautiful art. So what I want to do
in the next lesson is I want to show you how you can kind of do this
step, you know, take this step to the next level by working back into it with a variety of art
media and techniques. So it kind of we've prepped
our canvas, we could say. And now we're going to use this as our starting point to add in some really fun
decorative elements and art elements, and who knows? I mean, it could become it
could become, you know, representational
or it could stay abstract. It's
completely up to you. But I'm going to share with
you in the next lesson, some of the ways that I
am currently exploring this in my art So
I'll see you soon.
10. Mixed Media Woven Watercolor Demo 2: I love any chance I get to add mixed media into my artwork, and I love finding
new ways to take kind of basic processes and
expand them further and kind of really see how far I can push them and what new discoveries
come along the way. So in this lesson, I wanted to share some different ways
that you can approach working back into
your woven paintings to define some imagery, to really beef up some contrast, to add some interesting
textures and details, and just different
ways that you can push this class
project even further. M So now I have the weaving
done for this one. So this one I want to
show you how you can add different mixed media
techniques to your weaving. I've got some Posca paint pens. I've got some colored pencils. I really love doing inkwork
back into my watercolors, so I'm going to grab a
fine liner and a sharpie. And I might grab a couple
other supplies. We'll see. But I think what
I'm going to do is, I'm going to approach
this just the way I would a textured watercolor traditional
piece that I would do, and I'm just going to
kind of start inking in along the edges, using the weaving
details and along the designs that the
textured materials create. And not really thinking
too much about it. If you are new to mixed
doing watercolor and ink, definitely check out my I
have a class that's all about simple abstract watercolor
and inking techniques. And that's the one that has the salt technique that
I mentioned earlier. It's got a couple of
different ways you can do decorative
paper with watercolor, but then it also
gets into how to ink back into your paintings and use the textures that you create to give you a jumping off point for embellishing with ink. This is one of my
favorite things to do with my watercolor papers, whether it's a
representational work or it's just an abstract piece. But it's really fun
because you start to see the textures that you've
created in a whole new way, especially if you just let go and just follow the lines
and don't think about it. This one is the
outlining technique. So I'm just loosely
going along the edges. I decide to double it up
just for some variation. But we could do dots, we could do hatch marks. We could start to
look for images within the weaving
that we've created. It also creates a really
nice connecting piece across woven strips, how this line comes down where
the watercolor gets cut, but continues on, and then it kind of does
this nice peekaboo too. So this one goes up and
then it disappears behind the orange fabric and then
it continues on around. That's a really fun
way to start working some mixed medium and different
linework into pieces. A very low stakes way to do
it too, which I really like. I like there's really no way that this
could get messed up. So it's a really
nice introduction to how to do watercolor
and inkwork. Then you might start to see
some connecting lines across different strips too that
aren't part of the same paper. But it's the same idea
of kind of, you know, breaking up any paper with
some basic linework and, you know, getting you into a piece when you're not
really sure where to begin. This one, I'm just
going to kind of commit and follow this
all the way down. And then I'm going to
follow it back up again. The inking step can
take a while and you can do as little or
as much as you want to. I say step just
because if you're going to try all of the
different approaches I am, but a lot of it's going to depend on the art
supplies you have on hand and what you want to do and the texture
papers that you created. Because even though we're
exploring the same kind of textures across our
different watercolor papers, the way we apply our paint, the way we apply the techniques, and then also the colors that we've chosen and the
way that we've chosen to create our weaving is going to change what we have to play with when we get
to the mixed media step. This one has already
gone a place, I wasn't expecting it to. I hadn't really intended I don't know. I guess
I didn't really. I don't know what
I intended because I just kind of
started going for it. And the inking is
really fun, too. If you've never inked
into a painting, this is a really fun way
to jazz up your paintings, give them a little
something else. It creates a really
nice depth to them. There's even more layering happening now because
of what I'm pulling out with the inking details and
what I'm choosing to ignore, kind of let fade
into the background. I love that. That play of
positive and negative space. Alright, so we've got
some inking going on and breaking things up.
We could keep going. It's actually kind
of a challenge sometimes to get
yourself to stop inking. It's a good problem to have
when you don't want to stop an art technique. But I'm going to try a couple of different ones in this piece. So let's see. I'm
gonna go in with some colored pencil and
kind of pop some things and play around with shifting some of the colors
that I've got going on here. This is also going to
help unify it a bit. This is going to
make some things pop so this section
is now going to pop off of this one a little
bit more because they're very similar in value. But it's also going to help unify with the orange
fabric that I put in there. But I don't want to
do it everywhere. So again, all of this is a play between positive
and negative space. Because everything was
fairly unified and now we're really having some stuff step
up, some stuff fade back. You could also paint
back into these. That would be another
really fun thing to do with watercolor or
acrylic or quash. I think I'm going to
stick to drawing media. I'm going to play
around a little bit with adding in
some line details, and this will add
some nice variety to the organic nature of what's happening with the
watercolor strips. So the cool thing about
paint hands is they obscure whatever's
underneath them. So they add even more depth to a piece, which
is pretty cool. Mmm. That's good. I'm feeling
good about that one. I'm going to let
this one be done. And so as you're working
back into your weavings, if you choose to do
the mixed media step, think about ways that you
can play with the color that you already have on your papers. Think about how you can play with positive and
negative space and really pull some details forward
and push some sections back, both through color intensity, through value contrast, through boldness and extremes
of value and color. And just have some
fun with it. I mean, use your watercolor
textured papers as kind of a jumping off point and go at it with whatever
materials you have on hand. This could be really fun to do with any art supplies
that you have. Even just going back
in with graphite or a ballpoint pen would add some
really interesting stuff. Go ahead and add any
embellishments that you'd like to to your
woman paintings. And then when you're
ready, head it over to the final lesson to
wrap up the glass.
11. Final Thoughts WC Weaving: Thank you so much
for joining me on our woven watercolor
painting journey. I hope you enjoyed exploring different watercolor
techniques to embellish your papers and
revisiting some of the nostalgic feelings of paper weaving from
your childhood. And I hope you're excited
to have a new way to approach art making in
your adult art practice. I would love to see
your woven paintings, so be sure to share
those pictures over in the student gallery on the class project section of class, and don't forget to check out the weavings of other students. It's so interesting to see how different our watercolor
techniques turn out, even when we're using the
same approaches to it, the color combinations
that we play with, and especially what
mixed media details were incorporated into
different student projects. Be sure to also consider
leaving a review. The great thing about
reviews is it gives feedback to students who are considering
taking the class. It's a great way to kind of get a really insider's look
at what a class is like, what other students
are enjoying, what they got out of it. And I know I really
rely on those as a student when I'm
considering classes, and I appreciate
leaving a review as a student because it allows me to kind of
process what I've learned, how I might apply
it in the future, different how moments
I had along the way. Just to give a thanks
to the teacher and even offer some suggestions
for what they might consider adding or continuing to do in their
own teaching practice. If you want to keep learning
with me here on Skill Share, be sure to click
the Follow button, so you get notified as I upload new classes
throughout the year. And if you want to connect
beyond Skill Share, be sure to join me
over on YouTube. On my YouTube channel, I share art techniques,
art approaches, different creative
processes I'm working on, what I'm excited about
in the art world, and I take you along on some art adventures I
have throughout the year. So it's really fun
over on YouTube, and I would love to connect with you in any way shape we can. That also includes Instagram. I love sharing my own creative journey
and my work over on my Instagram and celebrating
the work of my students. So if you post your
work on Instagram, please tag me at Elizabeth Underscore Welfare
so that I can celebrate with you and continue to support you and follow along
on your creative journey. I really appreciate you
joining me in class. I had such a great time here, and I hope you did, too,
and I'll see you next time.
Elisabeth Wellfare, Artist, Art Educator
