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Adding Paint & Spreading with Water

Lesson 4 from: Introduction to Mixed Media

Stephenie Hamen

Adding Paint & Spreading with Water

Lesson 4 from: Introduction to Mixed Media

Stephenie Hamen

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Lesson Info

4. Adding Paint & Spreading with Water

Lesson Info

Adding Paint & Spreading with Water

So we're going to use acrylic paints in this class, I like acrylics a lot because one, they dry really fast, but the other nice thing about them is they're really workable with water, and so anything one that washes off with water and is really workable with water, I like, I'm going to talk just a little bit color theory, but like I said, I am self taught, so any color theorist out there can totally called me out because I believe that we have three primary colors, some tertiary colors, and then their secondary colors and all this other stuff. So are three secondary colors and then tertiary colors cm are already off, but my big thing is, when you take one color and you mix it with another color, you're going to get a third color, and if you don't dry in between, when we're doing this, you're going to get mud, and so we just want to avoid mud, so I have a color will I keep it all the time? I use it a lot, it's just a little paper color wheel when I'm doing stuff, and this for me is help...

ful because I tend to buy my colors very much looks like the primaries and then some secondaries and things like that, and then I mix a lot, so this for me is really helpful when I'm going to mix colors. Um, I have huge things of whites and blacks and grays that I like and then my bright and then after that I mix so this is really helpful when you're going to do that. Um, but the big thing is, when you take a couple of colors and you mix them together, if you don't know what you're mixing, I don't know what the result is gonna be, so just kind of stick to that, and then I also like to try to stay within, um, a color scheme as much as I can, so if I'm like, this is going to be a bit wilder than most stuff, but if I start with greens, I usually stay in like greens and blues, and although it may be a little bit of purple, but if I start with arrived monastic with rides and oranges, pinks, maybe yellow, so I try to stay within some of those fragments, but with this one, I'll show you guys the final one here. As you can see, I totally did not stick with that, and we've got pinks and greens and yellows and blues, purples and everything trying to bind here, but we dry each layer so that we don't get slap so the first thing I'm going to do is pick the color that I kind of want to be my base color for the whole thing and for this I would say you guys have number and night just don't use those we're just gonna put those over here, okay? Because that's if you use a really dark color on your base or as one of your middle layers that's one thing you can't usually recover from without throwing more just a line or throwing white over the tap and then restarting so we're going to kind of skipped those um but I'm feeling like pink today, so I started starting with pink, but if you don't feel pink and you don't like pink, don't start with pink, okay? Like I said, it's not going home with me is going home with you, so these are heavy body acrylic paints from ranger on what I like about these is there really opaque? So the color you get is very true to the color I'm a stickler like if the color here is this color, what comes out of the tube needs to be this color and they're they're really good about that so whatever color you see that's the color you're going to get and it covers it's a really good coverage pains if you just put it right on your going to get great coverage and it's very opaque when you're buying paints, one thing to look for is on the label you khun see sometimes with them they'll show if they're transparent or not and it's kind of watch for that depending on the look that you want if you want it to be transparent than buy a transparent paint or add water but if you want opaque don't buy it accidentally by transparent pain because then he'll put it on a go well look at that and then cover so just those are things that I think about when you're looking at paints and buying paint um and I say that and we're gonna add water to it make it transfers in anyway so it's okay, but one of my favorite things is the really expensive naming sank water bottle this goes with me everywhere when I'm working because with acrylics water is your best friend if you want to extend the life of it to keep working in a spot, just spritz it with a little water if you want to add a cool technique or texture spritz it with a little water you want to add some drips and drops spritz a little water so you don't like how it looks spray a lot of water and wipe it off so it's it's your best friend and I always have it it's kind of like I had I had a belt it would be in my belt so it hangs on my easel hangs on the edge of my table it's there's water bottles everywhere by means so, um, you guys should all have a water bottle pandey so the first thing we're going to do is put the paint on for our base, so I'm going to take this and I'm gonna paint it on now where the jess oh, is I might want it thicker. Well, see, this is the part where it really starts to take shape as you were individual piece before I do the whole thing because I want to make sure that this doesn't dry because the thing about acrylics is it dries fast don't fail me now. I brought you from home, okay? I'm gonna spritz it with water and I'm gonna leave it and then I'm gonna move on and had paint in other spots and then I'm gonna go back and we will kind of thin it out or adam or whatever and see this is when you'll start to see that texture two of your paper if you've got little bubbles and things will start to see some of that come through and you can kind of see there, the water kind ofjust sitting on top of it, and the thing about acrylic paint is it reacts with water while it's still wet, but once it dries, it's dry you can't do anything with water once it's dry then it's on so you want to make sure that if you want to do anything with water you do it right away it's not like an oil paint we've got lots of time to move and shift and adjust your kind of locked in you could always scrape it off but then you run the risk of either ripping your paper or doing damage to your piece so we've got that because you're doing that wayne noticed that you put decoupage over the just so is that at any point would that make the paint a little less likely to adhere to the just so it well but for like I said, we're doing tv purposes if you here's what I would say for this we're going to put so many layers on it that the jessel for this is really to add texture and contrast where is if you were doing it to prep a serve like the whole surface you wouldn't want to cover it with something else but because we're using it more as um breitner in spots it'll be okay but if you were prepping a surface I definitely wouldn't I have covered it with something else then so okay so paper towels thought I had a mother there they're hiding so yeah um with the first layer of color should we think about light to dark dark delight as faras tone I think it's kind of up to you I would definitely not try to put yellow as your third coat so if you wanted to use the yellow to be really bright put that down on your bottom but yeah, I think about it from that's why so take the number out take the black out whatever you put down it's gonna be hard to cover with the next layer unless you go really sick so if you do this with like the pink and anyone put yellow just make sure that when you put the yellow on because it's an opaque paint you'll still definitely be able to see it but if you do it with a translucent technique then you're not gonna be able to see this well, so it just kind of depends on how you're using it and what you're going to do with it. So for this I would definitely say we're going to kind of go light to darker brighter I would have a hard time with dark because I don't use dark colors everything's bright in in your face colors so um but yeah, you definitely want to think about that we are going to a lot of color running so you're going to get some water in there so you want to make sure that that's gonna stand out so maybe not used yellow as like your third color that might get a little bit lost okay so now everything's what? Um, with water? And I'm just taking my paper towel, and I'm kind of going through I have really expensive tools at my house, I have paper tells our baby wipes, water bottles, you know? And then I'm just lifting some of that color off, so I want the white part, but I still want to have a little bit of pink in there. I'm just gonna go through and take a little bit of that off, so you get some of that color showing through, but you don't get it super dark, and you can if you want to work, really? And I think a lot of this comes from me being an impatient person. If you want to work really slow, you can take your time and you can mix the paint with your water and just carefully brushing honest, they'll get the same effect. I don't work that way, so I'm like, throw it on there it was the water, and then just take it off because the other thing is, like I said, once it's dry, it's down and it's done, so if you put it on too thick, you can always add more, but taking it off is a lot harder than adding it back on, so if I take too much off like I did right here, I can always so there's a little spot right here where I took a lot of color off. Well, I have to do is go back in with my brush on my water and I can add it back in whereas if I let this dry, I can't do the opposite. That makes sense. Okay, thanks. Thank you. And you can also, as we're doing this, I'll give you a little tips and tricks too. What the paper tell you can use if you like. This is pretty textured so you could lay it out and you could get that cool texture if you like the texture from that. I use bubble wrap a lot to get really cool textures and, well, either add paint with the bubble wrap or pull it off with the bubble wrap. And then you get these cool little spots and things um, all throughout the pain, it's just different ways to add a different look or a different texture to it. Like I said, really high tech bubble wrap, paper towels, baby wipes. Okay, so once I like my base, I'm going to drive the whole thing again so that I can add my next layer of color you guys doing okay out there? I will say, I love this because it's like you didn't add you're out of your just across the whole thing's you got a different look and then we got different papers in different colors and everybody's got different results already color pretty much yeah I'm just I always tend to stick with the brights if you wanted to make these pastel you could make some you know with white and you'll get a more pastel results I just I like living a bright life well we live by the seeds so I like everything to feel like the ocean nice I live in the midwest there's no salty ocean feel we're talking about this earlier you there so cold you can't go outside or so hot you can't go outside and you have about a month on each end where you can so I look for stuff to brighten up my life I could get used to this salty ocean air though this is everybody's like it's freezing here and like what you think about this a shorts weather my kids will be running around in shorts and a sweatshirt in the morning and by noon they'd have a t shirt on and be fine is great how are you guys feeling out there good you're not making too much of a mess of yourself okay? I will say if you guys don't have it this will be a plug for ranger who is the sponsor but they make this little scrubber and you put it in the think it's, just this really odd material. I don't know what it is, but you put in the think you start washing your hands with soap and then you picked this scrubber up and it literally it's like the magic eraser for your hands, and it just takes everything off the deck, a posh, the glues, the paints and you could just be completely covered. You just take that thing. I don't it's like the magic eraser. I don't want to know what's inside. I really don't, but it works really well and that thing I remember the first we were at an event and I was covered. We all were in, we're all standing in line in the bathroom and there was one in each sink and we all were just like, oh, this is but so if your messy I actually stuck want brought one with me, so I'm happy to share it with all of you. For those of you home, I'm sorry you're on your own on that one.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Intro To Mixed Media Quotes
Intro To Mixed Media Supply List

Ratings and Reviews

Kimberly Jones
 

This was very informative, and quite fun to watch. I liked that the instructor endorsed the idea of using items that you have onhand; repurposing old books and other items to use until you really know where your style lies. I also like that she shared the names of products she truly believed were worth purchasing, without being pushy. This art form encourages "play" and is quite forgiving if you have a "happy little accident", because it's not difficult to cover the area in question, to try something different. I'm quite happy that I viewed this class!

Kedryn Evans
 

Wonderful class, so much fun and I love how Stephanie makes you feel so relaxed and that things will be great even if you've never tried something like this before. I wanted to watch the course to get the idea of it, now I can't wait to get the supplies and watch again while trying it out myself. Thanks!

a Creativelive Student
 

I really enjoyed this class. Stephanie was fun and relaxed which made the learning fun and relaxed. I can't wait to get my hands dirty and give it a try!

Student Work

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