hi everyone it's molly welcome back to my channel thank you for being here.
i am working on a two - two foot by four foot painting. i had been putting it off until
i had enough space in my garage and it's finally time i just need to get it done. i miss working
on big canvases honestly. so the camera angles are going to be a little bit different tonight
i may even, depending on how long this takes, speed up some parts but i think what i'll
do is maybe give you some tips and tricks and talk you through how to approach large canvas work so
let's paint okay so i wanted to take you through kind of how i approach large canvas work and of
course i start by taping off the back especially if it's a commission i like the backs to be
somewhat clean if there are drips that go down the side i'm totally okay with that or down the back
it's okay it's art i've been to art shows and have seen the backs
completely messy and people are selling them for thousands of dollars it's okay
a real person made them but for the most part i like to try to tape it off keep it somewhat clean
it's so funny i'm even having a hard time stretching across to tape off the sides
you want to make sure when you're buying large canvases at the store that you put them on the
ground and make sure they're level in the store if you buy them warped it's very difficult if you
have a piece that's already warped take it back save your receipts there i was just making sure
the canvas was level on the table surface and on the stands that i'm using my stands are finally
here and i'm so excited i shipped out to everyone that pre-ordered and i do have some left over
and i've ordered more so if anyone would like the stands for larger canvas work they are in my etsy
store i'm just painting the sides here especially because the prussian blue mixture that i used it
is semi-transparent i added some black to make it more opaque because that's the color that
they wanted but i always try to paint my sides if i have a darker color that's not opaque i realized
a little bit in that i had painted a whole side blue instead of stopping but that's okay what i
did afterwards was took the um sky blue color and went ahead and just painted over the sides
to make them fully opaque again so no issues if you mess up it's paint you can fix it i promise
so now i'm just painting both sides the prep work is really one of the most important parts and it's
honestly kind of relaxing to me i like this part of it it's my time to kind of think about it think
about how i'm going to go about the process and i really enjoy this part so those are huge paint
containers 32 ounce paint containers that i made up i cannot recommend enough if you're working on
a large canvas make sure you have enough paint you can always cover it with some present seal
if you don't use it all but it's really hard to make the exact same consistency again
so i'm just using my blow dryer to spread out the paint at this point
and there's some bubbles but i'll pop those with my torch
when i'm working on larger canvases i do tend to hold my blow dryer almost perpendicular
to the canvas and i get really close to help push the paint where it's going
if you find that you're having an issue with that try to change the angle of
your blow dryer a little bit especially when working on large canvases sometimes
it's hard to get the paint to move you really have to angle your blow dryer well
and get close to the canvas to push it where it's going i am still blowing on low believe it or not
now i'm just tilting so when you're working on a big canvas a lot of times the paint will pool
in the center because you don't have a ton of braces there if your canvas was a little saggy
all you had to do was either put a piece of cardboard underneath it or you could wet the
canvas and blow it dry before there's any paint on it and try to tighten it that way
as well mine were pretty tight so i didn't have to worry too much about it
i'm just popping all the air bubbles now with my tiny little torch so here comes the sky blue and
again i didn't use all the sky blue that i had but i used it for another painting afterwards
i don't think you can ever go wrong with having some leftover paints i make some of my
best paintings from leftovers
so same thing again here i'm using my blow dryer and i'm really trying to push the paint
where it's going but if it stopped moving and you've really got a good angle on it
you may just need to add some more paint and that's what i do here
so it's okay if you have to add more just add a little bit from what you've made blow that in
and it will all dry flat and mix together if your paints are mixed to the correct
consistency
so here i'm just layering the colors that first color was phthalo blue and now i've got the white
and i put the white next to the phthalo blue because the two of them
combine to make this beautiful blue color and i really enjoy the way that they look
next is a turquoise and all these colors were selected by the person that did the commission
and she picked great colors she actually picked it off of a pillow
that was my lime green and that's going to be really the focal point
and i'm just running my finger along as the paint is dripping down the side
just so that i don't have any raised areas when i'm finished
now comes the magic this is my silver and this is winsor and newton silver
mixed with a little bit of soho silver that's what creates the beautiful cells that i get
when i'm doing paint and water kind of blow dryer techniques dutch pores or ear swipes
so here i actually had a little bit of trouble blowing you have to think about what direction
your blow dryer is going especially when you're working on large canvases
you have to have a picture in your head of where you want the paint to go
so i started out blowing a little bit towards the center when i really should have been blowing kind
of a little bit more up but i corrected if you saw there right there i corrected that little part
to make it visually what i wanted so i'm just covering a little bit more space there
and now i'm gonna blow that off the side
and i really love these side designs they are just so interesting and they still leave a good
amount of negative space there which i do enjoy but sometimes i just like big bold pops of color
you can let me know what size canvas have you worked on what's your largest canvas
that you've worked on i think mine's probably been a three foot by four foot
diptych together so these were two foot by four foot pieces and i was so nervous i've been doing
this so long and i still get nervous when i paint commissions and when i'm working with big canvases
the paint's not cheap the canvas isn't cheap but like i always say you can always work on it
you can even paint parts of it after it's dried if you don't like them
well here they are i had to stand all the way back here to get them in frame i'll go a
little bit closer let me see if i can walk in but i just wanted you to get the full
effect and how actually tall they are it's amazing all right let me come around
and i'll show you some of the beautiful details i'm about to varnish it
and down here the green is really really bright it's beautiful there's just the tiniest little
bit of details everywhere these little pops come back out go to the next one
so there's this that's silver it kind of shines
so i hope you found this informational
is that a word and i really just wanted to kind of talk you through
you know i'm such a mess look at all my stuff over there i really just wanted to talk you through
how i approach larger work because that's really my passion it's much easier to try
it on small things and show you the videos there but oh i really love working on large canvases
but i hope you enjoyed thank you so much for watching happy painting bye