Alright you lot, welcome back!
Today’s sketchbook page actually surprised me with ow much fun it turned out to be.
It was a real practice in just letting loose and experimenting with painting techniques.
So I started out by masking off a few boxes on the page, I used regular tape that I stuck
on the back of my hand to take some of the stickiness away and then some thin washi which
peels up really easily anyway.
Oh and before we go on, quick update on the unfinished shape challenge sketchbook page,
thanks for all your suggestions, I ended up with so many great ideas that I wanted to
try!
I decided to go for a dinosaur head and I think it worked really well.
So back to these paintings, as you saw at the beginning, I just mixed up five colours
that I decided to use throughout.
I searched colour scheme on pinterest and just picked a selection that I liked really
well, this dusty pink, a lovely dark blue, a sort of chalky green colour, basic beige
and a muted burgundy.
And then I just started painting.
I didn’t want to think too much about it, I kind of had in mind that I could take inspiration
from flowers and nature so this first one obviously resembles a flower quite a bit I
think.
And for this one I was looking at swirling wet paint in wet paint.
This is a great way to experiment with a medium in a way that’s gonna produce hopefully
a nice page of art.
And maybe give you ideas for backgrounds or colour schemes or paint techniques that you
can implement into your work.
And it’s also something that I don’t think you can ever get too carried away with.
It’s really easy to just keep adding and adding things, you really just get sucked
into this mood to keep creating and pushing the limits of what you’d normally do.
So as you can see I’m just adding its of little details here and there, seeing what
I like and might not like.
I go from one to another quite quickly cos I don’t wanna stop and think at all, I want
it to e really natural and just free and just let it take me wherever.
With this one I was looking at layering paint, a bit of practice with negative space, and
again I think there’s a heavy theme of plants ad nature.
This page was one of the most fun ones so far in this series, it’s something I know
I’m gonna do more often from now on.
Just a great way to create some art with no pressure.
If you find that art is getting a bit stressful, sometimes it does for me, and you miss that
feeling of just creating for the sake of it and really getting lost in it, losing track
of time, this is a great way to feel like that.
I was listening to a really great podcast at the time, called This American Life, and
it was telling the story of this old couple unexpectedly finding love in a retirement
home and the sun was shining and I just felt really content.
And the more I painted the more I wanted to paint.
Okay for this next one it took me a second to realise I was painting out of shot.
This one i guess you could say was about shapes and lines.
I really didn’t approach this with any rhyme or reason, I would just get an idea from the
previous one and think, I wanna try that but a little bit differently in the next one.
So painting like the reeds and branches in the previous one made me wanna see what some
more shape-oriented lines would look like.
These look like poppies to me, or they’re giving me a poppy vibe anyway.
And I think this one has more of a pop art feel.
So.. it kind of works!
Okay so up next was like a really wet on wet one.
I was hoping the paint would really spread out in blobs but I think I’m just used to
doing this with ink with a much more impressive result.
Still that’s what experimentation is about.
Then I did a bit of spraying dark paint over the top for that paint splatter look and using
the really bristly brush then made me want to do a bristly, stripy, dry brush painting
so thats what I did next.
It feels great when one idea leads to another.
I usually have to really force ideas , everything is very considered, but the more you let go
and create for the sake of creating, the easier I think that comes to you.
It’s just important to find a balance between the serious side of art where you’re practicing
and studying and the fun side.
I mentioned a while ago that I’d work on a video about improving your art, being self-taught
and that’s coming soon and I talk a bit more about the balance of work and play in
that.
So that’ll be up within the next week or so.
And hopefully it’ll help some people who are struggling to see an improvement in their
work or don’t know what direction to take.
Okay and for the final painting, this is where my inspiration was kind of running out but
I still ended up liking what I did.
I basically just put the paintbrush down, started making marks on the paper and let
it go from there.
And if you’re ever at all stuck with your creativity, thats a great place to start.
Just make marks on paper.
Right I hope you enjoyed today’s video, thanks so much for watching and I’ll see
you soon for the next one.
Love you guys, bye!