Lessons

Lesson Info

Other Techniques

now here's some other things to think about this is a little ten minute sketch I did one afternoon with a single edge razor blade now what I did was I just laid some thick color down on the left hand side with my brush and then I went in with the razor blade before the paint was dry and I lifted out these areas here which you can see and it created the definition of the rocks and created highlights on the rocks at the same time so basically the light was coming from this direction and here's a highlight on iraq and that here's the edge of the rock and here's another highlight and here's another edge and it's a very effective way this area back here it's a very effective way to create rocks and to give some very sort of odd edges and you can also taken old credit card that you don't want to use anymore and you can cut off corners of it in different lengths and used the edge of a credit card to scrape there are people who put down broad washes let me try that I've got a single inch razor...

blade here people who put down broad washes of color see if I can get a good around here don't know that I can but we'll try that's good enough okay so then you go in with your razor blade see what that does it's very cool and they good they did they go and you know those cliffs that air that are just sort of jagged there just like shale cliffs where they just come down in the sheets and with these corners and edges and they'll do the whole the whole cliff kind of like this yeah this is not a great way but see that paint on that afterwards oh yeah sure absolutely you can paint on it wet again I mean I could go in with some color right now but it'll bleed you know although it's pretty dry it things air drying very fast in here today we'll set up a bunch of really big spots in here is a studio don't need hair dryer anymore well you know that the good light is hot I mean I use light in my studio that warms up the studio a lot but that's kind of interesting I mean that look could be it outcropping of rocks you know often the distance just done with the razor blade or a credit card so that's a great technique I love that technique now this is another siri's of rocks that I did on that silly sort of cancer and biggie paper and I turned it over and did it on the striated side this is decide that has the lines running through it and this was done where I literally picked up the paint with the razor blade in other words I painted with the razor blade so let me see if I can get wonder find mixed enough paint here to do that I don't know that I did maybe oh yeah there's a little bit there he makes plenty of pain and it should be pretty thick if it's to wet it'll just sort of fall off the razor blade not being you won't be able to paint with it very well see that that's actually painting the razor blade and then you could go back in drop in some color leave some highlight well this is definitely uh getting a lot of people excited valley good there's been surprisingly few questions on line I was just going to say I mean it's been very quiet but I guess maybe people are watching well the word dizziness has come up several times I think this is just so many techniques and a lot of people are trying him right now that they're just they couldn't believe it but look at that I mean that's cool that's really and this is a way see this is a way for people like me to loosen up because you've got to do it fast and you just and you don't know what you're going to get you just play around with it until you you see what comes up and then you go in and you add other things it's just a lot of fun to paint like this a lot a lot of fun so this painting was done that way this painting here all of this was done with a razor blade and then I just went in with a brush and dropped in a few pieces of color care and there this was done with the brush there's dry brush down there and this was painted and then I went in with the rolled paper towel and lifted it out but this can't this can't sandpaper doesn't lee it shows everything you can see every stray ation everything there but it's okay I mean you know it's a little ten minute study now these trees were completely painted with a credit card you just mix up a puddle of thick color with all kinds of colors in it just you know reds and blues and yellows and everything and you get the color on the edge of the card and then if you go like this and it creates that birch tree effect very very simple and then I went in and I painted some of the areas around it and put some highlights on the trees and everything but that entire all of those trees were painted with a credit card sieberg says online here that's what my teacher says stare at the bark and it will teach you yeah I mean it's it's it's fun this is just fun and as long as you you know you there's one side of the trees obviously the light is over here coming from this direction so the shadow side is back here now I did go in you can see I did go in and add a ad with paint the shadow on the back side of the tree but that's where the thickest areas of the credit card painter going to be and then as you drag it across the paper it gets thinner and thinner and that's what gives you that look of birch brocco cat says now this is a car that beijing back yeah exactly exactly so definitely try that because that was the fun one too okay now this is not a great painting it's a like a little lollipop tree it's not even as good as bob ross is happy little trees but this was done we'll be going don't be barbara happy trees I'm not I'm not I'm really not this was done with one of those what do you call these their natural sea sponges and I have one here it's this one see these you can get these and you can tear them apart in all kinds of different shapes and things like that so I'm just going to pick up some of this color that's already on my pal it's not very dark and I don't really have very much color but you can see I need more color gets more color you can see how this would make very interesting trees okay and then you can go back in and drop in some color that bleeds in you khun do the shadows underneath the bows of the tree you can see in the painting there that usually you know there's light showing on the top you can create some shadows in there I'm not doing these in the right colors obviously but then you can go in and you consort of feather some things out could create a little bleed and then if you wanted to you could go in with your rigor brush remember our little skinny longhaired brush and you could put some tree branches in their ego now too bad I didn't do it good colors but those are the colors I had on my palate but you can see how you could get some really interesting stuff that way and it's very easy it's very quick and you could get fabulous trees that way because they're unpredictable and my tree over here is just a little bit too predictable if you look at the one on the screen it's just a little round rock the lollypop treat but again I did it and you know this whole thing took five minutes this whole thing took five minutes well tim and it's not a bad little tree I mean you know you had a few of those in a painting and they're small and in the background it's it's okay it's okay it works I wish I'd taken these an extended them out a little bit more and trees I mean there's some people who spend just so much time just learning how to paint trees trees or big you know everything in nature is is big and learning how to paint nature is one of the you know one of the things that people put all their time into they spend almost all their time learning how to paint nature and you know I haven't painted trees enough and I just made this up I wasn't even looking at anything I just made this up out of my head so yeah do you do like you say it took you five to ten minutes do you just every now and then just sit down with intention it is doing a quick painting just to loosen up or yeah I have done that I have done that it never ever turns out the way I I think it's going to in my mind's eye but you know I think I should do that slide of the woman's head that I ended up with when I started out with a man you know yeah it's it's great to do that and last week we talked about doing gesture drawing where you just do one in two minute sketches with your paintbrush and you do it with your pencil in drawing form or you do it with your paintbrush so doing things fast and learning how to do things fast is a very important skill to learn as a painter very important skill so I would practice that as much as possible I absolutely would okay now this is a fun technique you guys have bottles of alcohol on your table and find a clean part of your cheat of paper that you're working with and let's get a couple of different colors let's go with let's do our fellow blue and just put a swath of stay low bloo across your paper get a good wet if you can and then let's try and opaque let's go to our indian red and let's see what the difference is between arthur a lower transparent in our opaque okay now while this is wet drop in little drops of alcohol now my drops are big because I've got sort of a course wide open mouth here and do it while it's really really wet and then let it dry just a little bit you might want to blow on it a little bit and go to an area that's a lot drier than it was when you first put the alcohol on my indian red still quite wet but I can't go to the halo and you'll see it handles a little differently the more it dries the less the effect can be seen see that part there the paper's much drier when I put that on then it was when I put it on over here much dryer here now this is still pretty wet down here so let me see still pretty wet so it made yeah it's still pretty wet but as you get further along in the drawing process it'll have less and less effect now you can also dip a toothbrush and alcohol and spritz it you can also put this in a spray bottle and spreads it so they're different effects the alcohol will have somewhat the same effect but how these air big drops falling on the paper if you want a finer touch with it think of another way to apply it use a spritzer use a toothbrush dip it in the brush and splatter it like we did the splattering technique earlier all of those things will give you a different effect of the alcohol on the paper but with this what would you use this effect for well I I the very first thing I thought of is that a lot of people love to do paintings where they're looking at rocks on the side of a beach but they're looking at it through the water so think of the lycan and all the different kinds of things that could be growing on sides of rocks and stuff like that tide pools and all of that this is a this is a shape you see a nature a lot so that's where I would that's where I would use it now once this's down let me see what happens when I paint over this I tried this once in a painting of mine and I didn't like the effect and then when I went in tried to paint over it didn't paint over very well so let me try painting over this and see what happens this one sort somewhat dry yeah it just takes the paint differently see what happens those areas that were nice and white now they're dark circles very interesting I you know I look at that and I go well you know this doesn't look so pretty but I can see applications for it down the line I can definitely see applications for it so that's our alcohol technique you see where we are on our ms get back here this's looks pretty pretty much dry so let me take our pira will rid and see what happens when you put it on top of this miss kate this is the miss kit that I put on earlier I don't know if you can see those little round kind of hard to see isn't it can you see those little round blobs of the of the masking fluid so when this paint dries now when I go begin toe lift that off you're going to get like a string of pearls it's gonna look like a string of pearls kind of interesting now this is one of my favorites this is blowing through a straw this is taking paint and putting it just in just blobs on your paper and then I love this this so much fun so you all have some extra paper you don't need to use a full quarter sheet if you don't want to and you all have straws I brought straws for everybody so basically the only thing we're missing mixing their missing is margarita mix straws we got assault we've got the alcohol it's friday it's afternoon I mean it's afternoon you know we could definitely have that and rocco can't give some words of advice take deep breaths and don't blow through the straw too much because it will make you dizzy yes I'm sure it does okay that's the upside it's going okay so take your round I'm actually going to use a bigger round I'm going to use my number sixteen because I get more paint in it and I can demann demonstrate better with it probably so I'm going to start with the pira ll scarlett just like I did in the and you just get lots of paint and you drop it down in droplets on your paper just like that I'm going to go in and pick ups and ultra marine and you've got to make sure you got a good thick mixture of paint and lots of water so that you can actually get drops of color let's get some yellow how about will go for new game bo zhi no it's kind of a dirty new gamboa I didn't really clean out my brushes very well now if you do a really short burst you'll get that sort of fingerling thing like down here see this one down here justin just see that that's a fast fast burst of air there you go now I see a lot of people do abstracts using this kind of thing as you can see this is perfect for that and this one on the screen you know I had a lot of fun with that and I I liked it I like the way it looked when I got done with it I thought wow this came out okay but some green in there you can tilt run your colors in together let him bleed what were those things that we used to do is kids where they put things on like a wheel or something and yeah yeah spin art right this reminds me of that a little bit although it's not spinning but do you remember how the color is used to all bleed together and do all that crazy stuff on the paint smelled funny yeah yeah and you put the paper on and they'd be unbalanced absolutely so people want to know what you would do with this type of technique I think fantastic venus flytrap yeah what are those there there are plants out there that that if you did mostly in greens and things like that think about this they're plants out there that look like that they have little spindly tops I don't know what their call I'm not a you know the horticulture is by any stretch of the imagination but to me this looks like the edge of a of a bush and so if this was all done sort of in green and maybe had some little yellow tips on him and then I went in and painted some branches around it and be a very interesting way to get a close up of a bush and la de su was mentioning she said going all these techniques you know how do we know how to apply them and I told her that you go in and you try all these techniques and you make lots of notes because how you see what's going on in screen here going to try a lot of different things and then you look back after you make knows you're like oh this would make a nice rock this would make a great tree this would be wonderful for this wonderful for that and you just applied those techniques as you go exactly and and also when you go out if you start looking and remember from the very beginning I talked about looking at life with a painter's eye if you go out from here on out and everywhere you go everywhere you look you start thinking of how would I paint that that just if you just start thinking that way how would I paint that then you'll start to remember some of these techniques and you'll come back to them and you'll go oh I know how I can paint that because that's how that's what I learned in molly's class we did that we did that with the razor blade I can get those rocks because we did that in the class with the razor blade so that's the number one thing to do is just to ask yourself that question as often as you can if you're serious about becoming a painter now these colors aren't that great the one on the screen I liked a lot lot better but that's an interesting effect you know I could crop this and crop at some of those colors and put some washes and some other things in the background making interesting little painting