Transcription
today we're going to make a bright bold colorful painting inspired by the Mexican tradition of painting on a mod a paper. The first thing you're gonna do is write your name and class in the back of your paper.
I always recommend sort of making a pattern frame around the picture. It's not always done on Amati paintings, but it is very commonly seen and in my experience, it tends to be worth a little bit of extra effort. Now I am sketching with a sharpie so it shows up better on camera. You should of course sketch first with pencil to make your plan.
And I'm making a simple design, but I want to fill the entire space. It's always a good idea to also have things running off the edges of your composition. And as I said, I'm making a pattern designed to sort of frame and make a border around my composition. As I do that, I'm just trying to make a simple pattern, a line design with spirals, wavy lines, horizontal, vertical lines, whatever you want. A simple pattern tends to work best.
Now as I looked at my composition, I felt like it needed some more organic shape, so I added some clouds. I'm ready to paint and a good strategy with painting can often be to paint sort of one color at a time to make sure that you spread those colors around. It also helps you to spend less time having to clean your brush. So I make sure that I repeat one color in different parts of my composition to make sure that I keep it all well balanced.
Now as I'm painting, even though these are liquid temper paints, they're already in a liquid form, I usually am thinning it out with just a little bit of water. Remember, the water thins out the paint to make it flow and spread more easily. That's especially important when you do line work. You want to have nice long, smooth, flowing lines, but of course, you have to balance the amount of water you have so the paint doesn't get thinned out too much and become drippy and too translucent. The less water you have, the more opaque the paints are going to be. That is especially important when you're working on a darker ground, as I am painting on the brown paper to mimic the style of a mod a paper. But if it's too thick, it doesn't spread very easily and that especially can be a problem when you are trying to do outlines and things like that.
As I add accent colors, I usually try to do like one quick line. I don't want to keep going over it because that will mix the colors. I just want to do one quick line to leave a streak of color where a shadow or a highlight might be.
Now as I paint the clouds, I start off with a base coat of white for the clouds, but then after I painted that base coat, honestly, I felt like it was a little boring to have just white on the clouds. I wanted to add a little bit of a pop of color because the rest of the painting is so bright and colorful and vivid. I wanted to repeat those colors in there. So I carefully painted a little bit of a pop of yellow for highlights and a little bit of blue for some shadows on there. But again, I'm thinning out the paint, especially so that it will be a nice smooth flowing line. So very, very thinned out so it's going to be a little bit paler mixing with the white, so it's a little bit of a subtler effect for those highlights and shadows on the clouds.
Now on the flowers, I decided to use the back of my paintbrush almost like a stamp. And when I dip the back of the paintbrush into the paint, the first spot that I make is going to have the most paint, so it's going to be the largest circle. And then each dot is going to get gradually smaller and smaller as there's less and less paint left on the handle. And that can make a nice effect as the the dots gets smaller and smaller.
There's a final step. I'm just outlining and again, I am thinning out my black paint so I can get a smoother flowing line. I'm not worried about it being a perfect line, but I do want it to be sort of a confident brushstroke, just going smoothly. I don't want to go back and forth and have a sketchy line because that is going to be a little bit messier. I try to do just one quick brushstroke and even if it's not perfect, it tends to look better having a longer, smoother brushstroke for the outline rather than having short, hesitant brush strokes.
As I paint those lines, I want to use the tip of the brush. I'm very, very, I try to be very gentle so I'm not flattening out the bristles on the brush because that will widen the line and you'll have less control over where the paint goes. Be very gentle. A quick, smooth, flowing line will work best. And that's about it.