From Watercolor to Bold Marks: Abstract Mixed Media Art Process

Hello everyone! Welcome back. This is Denise and today I'm going to paint on the Hahnemuhle watercolor paper and I've just cut three inches off the end so that I could have a, you know, nine by nine square, which I'm having fun with lately. And then what do you do with those pieces that you cut off? Well, you could use those to make little mini paintings that I've also been obsessed with lately. It's the perfect size if you cut those up into three inch squares so you're not wasting any of it. And then you can work on an oddball size piece of paper and not worry about what do you do with that little piece that you cut off. I love it! And I've been obsessed with those minis so having the freedom mentally to get myself permission to do that and have those pieces that I can now use in minis is very liberating. Oh no! Why'd I do that? There we go. And I'm just using painter's tape from the paint store, blue scotch painter's tape. And on a couple of these I've had pigment go up under the tape so now I need to make sure, not of the watercolor, but of like the gel sticks and stuff. So I'm just making sure I push that down. All right, what are we going to do today? I'm still working on the Kuretake Art Nouveau colors because I like them and I haven't used them enough. I mean, I have. I mean, look how much we've used but I haven't had them out in a while and these are very kind of pastel-y in colors I've noticed with the pieces that we've made. And they've made some really good pieces. I'm almost feeling like I liked that one with all the little squares. Maybe we should do one with a bunch of squares, pick some different colors than we had before. I'm kind of feeling like I like the purple and green. I also like this kind of pink and ochre. So we could maybe do pink ochre and I don't know. What do we want to do? Oh my gosh! Now I'm like, I'd pull out the color cards and do a color challenge but I don't know if I could really match the colors very well with these Kuretakes. But I'm kind of feeling like maybe this, maybe that, and then I don't know. Do we want to throw in this as a surprise or is that too much like what we did before? That might be too much like we did before. That might be exactly like what we did before. All right, let's rethink here because I feel like we did that one. Okay, do I like maybe these? Oh, I do like kind of those two. So maybe this, maybe this and this and then what could we do that could kind of be opposite that? Let's see. We've got, we've got blue and we've got yellow. So really that's kind of like split complementary here if you want to pull out your color wheels and kind of look at that. But we've got this because I wouldn't even call that like yellow yellow. It's like a, it's like a yellow green. It's the green goldy kind of stuff. So really we're kind of liking these but darker. And so this is suggesting red. Do we have red? I mean that's kind of the red. It's like red orange. It's not red red. Um, oh that's kind of crazy. We got this kind of, oh what about those? Then it's going to be kind of dark and moody. Okay, I'm feeling like we found it. I feel like we're going to go with that kind of dark teal color, green gold, and then this yummy kind of orangey color there. And I've got my little half inch square wash Princeton Neptune. And I'm just feeling like squares of color. Let's just, let's just do it. Let's just fill it in. No specific pattern. I'm not going for anything specific here. Just going to fill the page with different rectangles. And then we'll come back and do some mark making. Kind of rectangle-y. Not necessarily perfect rectangles. Oh my gosh, we're crazy. All right, so this, that's not necessarily a color palette that I would have normally pulled out. But man, it's very interesting, don't you think? Kind of muted after all the pastel-y ones that I've done out of this particular paint collection. Just fun to see how you can push some of these. We could be mixing color, but I'm choosing not to for a lot of these. But we could definitely mix a bunch of colors out of these too and just see like what, what colors do you get, you know, if you mix all of them. Need to do like a big pretty color wheel of different mixes or a big color swatch sheet of all the different things that maybe we could get out of those. Okay, I'm not leaving myself a lot of a lot of space here to do other stuff. Let's go ahead and fill that in. And we'll come back and maybe put some of this over there. Maybe I'll put, uh, kind of need this here. So nothing specific. We're just filling the page here. Don't get hung up on I have this next to that but not next to whatever. Just fill the page. Okay, pretty fun there. Different. Kind of want that to be darker, so I'm just going to pull some of this color back in here. Okay, we're gonna let that dry and just see where we ended up. So I'll be right back. All right, now that we got those colors in there, these are dark. These are very fall-like. I think I'm going to come in here and do some mark making and just, I don't know, I'm going to kind of do a few, maybe some lines. I feel like, um, some graphite bold spots maybe. You know what throws me off on a lot of artwork? What kind of gives me pause when I'm like, I don't know about this. It usually always centers around the color for me. And this is not a palette that I normally would have pulled together probably or gravitated towards. I've got colors that I gravitate towards even though I do love most colors. But then I get to this point and I'm looking at a piece and I'm like, huh, do I like that? Do I not? And usually the do I like it do or not has nothing to do with drawing or did I not do it good enough or whatever. It has to do with color for me. Like, did I like those colors? Did I make a mistake? That did I make a mistake feeling comes from the colors for me. Um, this is a temper stick. And I'm gonna put some bold lines over here because I like them. Yeah, and so then I, you know, I like all the colors. Sometimes putting some of the colors together is a little questionable. And then I start thinking, hmm, did I like what I did with those colors? That's what gives me pause. But a lot of times I'll go back later and I'll be like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. What was I thinking? So sometimes you need some space from those colors. Okay, let's see. I got some pencils over here. I'm kind of wondering if maybe we should pull some of these pencils out and see what we can get out of it. These are the Faber-Castell, um, black edition pencils. And I hadn't had these too too long, but I haven't pulled them out and used them again since I had them in an art haul either. But I'm kind of wondering if we can get a mark making something out of here that maybe we would like. So let me, let me just pull this out. Kind of like, look at this green. Like, would I like that green? Let's see what this is. And I like it because they're bold. It's almost like using my black wing pencils. They're so bold, which is kind of fun. So maybe we'll pull in this color, which it does seem to be the same color as the Neo Color 2 Crayon. And maybe we could make some design with this color, which pulls out the other colors that we've already got going on in here. Okay, I like that. Kind of pulled us a little in there. All right, so pulled out something I haven't used basically since I showed it to you. I'm good about that. Let's look at something and then forget we have it. Especially when you do something like this where you're doing art hauls and stuff. Okay, I feel like we need to pull in maybe some white dots and maybe some black lines. What are you thinking? I'm thinking, I think that's what I'm thinking. Let's do the black lines first. I'm kind of feeling like some lovely, just acimic writing kind of lines using the Black Magic Higgins Black Magic India ink, which I like because it's bold. It's kind of unpredictable, you know, when you're using the the dauber to get your ink out. I like that unpredictability, that wonkiness that we get out of there. It's not perfect. I like it. Okay, I like that. Kind of thinking too that even though I just said white dots, I want to throw some gold in there. Let me dry that black ink before we smear it everywhere. And I feel like this would be an appropriate piece for gold. So before I white dot it, let's gold it. This is my Kuretake Gold Mica ink in my fine line bottle and I just like to get it started. So am I thinking dots or some lines? I got a lot of lines in there, so I'm kind of thinking great big, maybe, or I could do some lovely circles, adding to the circles that I've got going on there. So I do feel like lovely circles in here too, just as an addition to what we've already got going. I want it to be exact. I just want some movement. So I'm kind of thinking that I might like the gold as some movement and then white dots. All right, let's just... I just want it to be some kind of like detail in here, not something specific, not something that's overwhelming. Lovely little detail as you get close and you think, what's going on there? Okay, I like that. That was fun. That's a good choice. And I could throw, if I want some dots, I could go ahead and throw some gold dots in. And I get really good control from the bottle. I'm holding it almost parallel to the page because the inks that you put in these are super duper fluid. So you want to hold it almost parallel to the page for the most control. Okay, I like that. All right, I'm liking that. I almost wish I had like a metallic blue now that that's so pretty. All right, we're gonna white dot it because I'm feeling it. Are you feeling it? I'm feeling it. I really feel like I'm chatting with y'all as I sit here and just chat away because at least when the video comes out, y'all chat back a little bit. Otherwise, it's just me in a room talking by myself to a camera. So it is fun to imagine people are painting with me and having fun with me. All right, before I overdo it, let's just call that enough white for the moment. I kind of feel like I need a little more white in there, but I don't. It's got a lot going on, so maybe, maybe we're there. I feel like maybe we're there. Let's say we're there. Let's go ahead and heat the tape so I don't tear the paper. This paper is great for not tearing with the tape, but I have so much tape there that the odds are good I'll tear it. So if you heat the tape up a little bit with your heat tool, it'll release that adhesive. This paper, the honeymoon paper, is really good if I just kind of heat the whole thing. If it's a wood pulp paper or student grade paper, any other paper, I'd run the heat tool with the peeling of the tape to make sure because the tape will cool back down. But I've had good luck just on this paper kind of heating the whole thing, and I think it's because it already does pretty well not pulling the paper off as I pull the tape. Look at this, oh my gosh, see some of the colors that you're like, I don't know, that's kind of, it's kind of dark, it's kind of strong. I don't know if I love it. I don't know if I love what I put together when you get it on there. You peel the tape, it turns into like magic, like you've contained it and it turned into a finished piece. I've been so happy with these. With the great big border on it, it just finishes it off. I love it. Oh my gosh, look at that, look at that, oh super fun. All right, I hope you had fun painting with me today, and I'll see you guys next time.