 of the instructors at the Longmont Museum. So we're starting our virtual art and sit classes as of tonight. We'll be streaming them in a couple of locations, including Facebook live and Longmont public media. So we've got a watercolor class tonight. It's going to be about making some reading cards. It's kind of an intro to some techniques. And if you can see the image on our Facebook page, you have kind of an idea of some of the techniques we're going to go through today. So I will be checking the comments as often as I can to respond to whatever you're talking about in the comments. But be aware, there is a slight lag from my recording. It's actually, I guess, my production to when I read your comments. So be patient with me if it takes me a minute or so to get back to you on your comment today. I've got two cameras. So I've got my face cam here. And then I'm going to switch down to the table, which has all of my supplies. And we'll talk a little bit about what I'm using. And what if you have at home is going to be fine for this? Because it's kind of a creative pursuit in that way. So let's get started. And I'll switch down to the table so you can see what I've got here. Since we're going to try and make a couple of cards, I do have a pair of scissors to cut the paper. And my sign, of course, I'll be using pencil eraser. This is masking tape. It's colored, but it's still masking tape. So it's not like a super sticky tape. And I'm going to use it to make some sharp edges on my paper. I've got watercolor paper that I'll tear out here in a second. This is salt, just regular old salt. And table salt's fine. Got a couple of water buckets and brushes. And this is my paint palette. I'll go over some of the colors I'm using. It's just a palette that I like to use. I've created kind of a guide of what colors they are here. And this isn't something you have to do specifically for yours. Use whatever colors you want. These are just colors I like. I'll be using a flat brush that's about a half inch. And that means that it's not rounded. It's pressed flat here. That's a flat brush. And I'll also be using a medium round as well. So that's a round ferrule, the metal part. And some kind of detail brush. Okay, those are the main ones. When I paint, I also like to have a towel over here to kind of wipe my paint in the brush as well. And then we've got here my extra little bit of paper here. So, oh, hold on a second. I think I have some technical difficulties I've got to address. So hang tight. Welcome. Hi, everyone. I know we're a couple minutes late on getting started. I had a little technical difficulty as I have to do on the first video, you know, virtual class of the season. So please do forgive me. My name is Lee Putman. And I am an instructor at the Lowe-Mont Museum. So we will be painting some watercolor greeting cards tonight. And I'm going to take you through some different techniques you can use to make some really beautiful, but you know, pretty accessible techniques. So what you'll want is some watercolor paper or if you don't have watercolor paper, you can use like thick paper, like some kind of card stock that would be fine. And watercolor paints and brushes and I'll go through all the supplies here in just a second on the table. I just wanted you to know a little bit about what we're going to be doing. I'm putting on making four cards tonight. And I'm going to stagger them throughout the evening so that one's drawing while the other one is kind of getting worked on. And just as a point of order, I want you to know that since we're streaming this live, there's a slight lag. So whatever I'm talking about and you're commenting about there might be a little time difference there. So be patient. I promise I want to talk to every one of your comments and make sure that I speak to everything that you have questions on. All right, that being said, let's get to painting. I'm going to switch down to my table camera. Here we go. What do I have here? This is watercolor paper. Not a perfect person. Julie just asked, will there be a recording? And all of these, once they're finished, they're posted on our Facebook page under videos. So technically, yes. Make sure that my camera focuses. So I want to get a few pieces of paper. I'm going to pick two pieces because I'm going to have these. So I'm going to take out two pieces here. And this is just cancel. It's not like especially expensive paper. It's the kind you get at my goals. Checking my other supplies. So here's my painting palette. And this is a palette from two watercolor paints that I just prefer the palette colors of. And a lot of them look like the same color. So what I've done is I've created a guide for myself and it has, you know, like the name and the brand and also a swatch of the color and their location on my palette. So this is the kind of thing that really helps me remember and know what I'm doing when I'm mixing paints. And I've got that here. You don't have to worry about anything like that tonight. But it's just a practice that I do like to do. And that way, when I'm talking about the paint colors, you'll know which ones I'm talking about. I've also got two buckets of water here. One is a smaller one. And then the other one is just a larger one. I like to keep one a little cleaner. And I never fill up my water too high. Because anytime that I'm using a brush, when I'm washing it, I don't want the water to go above the metal part towards the handle. That part right there, this is how our brushes start to get damaged. And so when you're washing a brush, we just want to make sure we don't get water above the ferrule between the ferrule and the handle. That will make sure that the handle doesn't shrink or grow or split, especially if you have a wooden handle. So I have just a little bit of water in there. Speaking of brushes, I'll be using a half inch flat. And this means it's a flat because of course it's got like kind of pinched flat area down here near the ferrule and half inch wide. And this is a medium sized round brush with a round ferrule, the metal part. And I'll be using a detail brush. And this is a calligraphy brush that I have, but I just like the size of it. It's a little tiny. So those are the brushes I plan on using tonight. I will also be using pencil and eraser and scissors to cut my cards. Some special things I'll be using are some masking tape. I know this is colored, but it is still just regular old, like not too sticky masking tape. So I'll be using that as well. And this is a jar of salt, table salt is fine, but I'll be using it to make some effects. And oh, the last thing is I always have a towel on the side so I can dry my brush a little bit or get me excess water off. And then I have a little scratched piece of paper down below to test the color. All right, so that's kind of my basic overview of what supplies I'll be using. Start with the actual painting, shall we? The first one I want to talk to you about is where to do some reverse painting. You're probably wondering what is reverse painting? And it's to paint the whole thing with one color, a lighter color, and then to go back on top once it's dried and paint the shadows around it, which make the light color come forward. And so that one we have to let dry. So we're going to paint it first. Remember I talked about how we're going to kind of level them. And in order to make my cards, this is a 9 by 12 sheet of paper. So I'll be folding it in half. I find it easier to do this than to measure it and draw a line. So I'm going to fold this in half. And you could, you know, do some deckled edges if you want to, like by bending it back and forth and tearing it. But since these other edges are already straight, I'll be cutting this. And I'm going to do this to both of my pieces. And then I will also be folding them into a greeting card shape afterwards. We got to get that prepared first. I'll do it again here. You'll notice on the, if you're using watercolor paper, there's one side that's a little smoother and one side that's a little rougher. Both sides should be okay. Just going to depend on what your preference is. The more you paint on paper, the more you realize you have a preference. So just pick one side and go with it tonight. I think I'm done with my scissors for now. So I'm going to set these other ones aside for now. Come back to them. And I'm going to fold one into our shape for the first painting, which is going to be our negative painting, reverse painting, I guess you could call it either way. I think negative painting is the most common term for it. The reason I folded it and unfolded it is I want to know kind of the space in which I'll be painting. But I don't really want to have this get wet too. So I'm unfolding it and I'm going to lay it down here. Let me adjust my camera just a little bit so you can see more of what I'm doing. There we go. Now comes our tape. So this is about a three-quarter inch thickness on the tape. Whatever size you have will work fine. You don't have to use tape. You don't. But I want to make a little white border around my image so I will be taping this off. But first, before you tape anything, we're going to take a piece of this tape and we're going to stick it onto whatever kind of clothing you have. If you have leggings or jeans or a sweater, something that's going to pick up some lint. And this is important. If we don't do this, then we might actually cause some damage to the paper. So I'm going to take this and off screen. I'm just going to rub it on my leggings here and make sure I get a little lint, maybe my sweater too. It just reduces a little bit of the amount of stickiness, which I know seems strange. But I really want to make sure that we don't have this sticking to the paper and tearing the paper afterwards. That would be a big problem. Stick it on there as straight as you can. And I'm not going to try and really burnish the edges too much up here, but I'm going to press my finger now against the edge that's closest to where I'll be painting. And I'll repeat on all four sides. I'll tell you, I have definitely painted something that took me a long time before. I really liked it. And then the tape, just when I took it off, it just tore the edge. And that was a pretty awful feeling. So really, we have to make sure we get some kind of lint on the tape. I mean, they have really delicate tape specifically for this. It's very expensive. And it does just fine. It does the job. But for me, you know, I'm just as happy with masking tape. A lot of artists are. It's low tack and acid free. So it won't cause any damage to the paper from an acid standpoint, but we just got to be careful of the extra stickiness. All right. I've got my tape on. And I just want to check in and make sure we're all good. I've brought my camera down just a little bit so that we can see more of what I'm working on. I just wanted you to be able to see also my palette too, because I think it's important to see how I'm mixing colors and what I'm doing with that. I always think I have my camera in the perfect spot. And then I changed my mind. All right, we're going to pick a couple of colors. And the first ones are background colors. So this is going to be the color that comes through. I'm going to pick a light color. For me, I'm going to pick a yellow. Anytime I'm painting, I want to start by getting my brush damp. So I'm going to go ahead and put it into my water bucket here. Get some water, but I want to make sure it's not drippy, you know, damp like that. And depending on what kind of paint you're using, you may need to wet your paint palette. I think I have a little spray bottle of water here, but you may have different kinds of paints than I do. So it's going to depend on you. You can just as simply use your brush to do it. It's going to be up to you on how you do it. I'm going to use some yellow. And you know what? I'm just going to put some yellow in. This is where we get to be creative. And then just some plain old water. And I think I'm going to put kind of a, oh, like this cadmium red, yellow. Excuse me, cadmium red light, which is an orangey red. I'm just going to kind of get a little bit and dab it around. I'm not trying to produce any kind of actual image right now. I'm just trying to get some pretty color patterns through here and let the watercolor just move around, you know. And then before it gets totally dry, I want to add in a couple little dots while it's still kind of damp that I think would be like exciting and extra, you know, strong value kind of thing. Okay, I've rinsed my brush. I'm wiping it off. Whenever I pick up color, I don't want my brush to be just sopping wet that causes problems. Because part of the thing about watercolor we have to remember is that we're really trying to balance the amount of water in the brush, in the paint, and on the paper. So that's kind of our challenge as watercolorists. All right, I see I have some water pooling down here. And so I'm going to use the edge of my towel to just kind of dab it. I don't want to leave too much liquid near the edge in case it goes past my little barrier of my barrier of the tape. So I'm just kind of drying off the edge here, just a little bit. So this is going to be the color that comes through, put my towel back. This is going to be the color that comes through. In a little bit, we'll take some dark paint, I'll probably use like a dark red or a dark purple or something, and paint in order to make like a grove of trees. But we'll be painting, not the tree themselves, but the space around the tree. So this is kind of an advanced concept, but we have to let this part dry first. So we're going to set this part aside and go on to the next one. So when I'm painting normally, I spend a little bit of time on one painting and then I start another one. And I go back and forth because watercolor is about layers. You know, just starting one and going all the way to finish could take me forever. So I really need to, if I want to continually like spend my time painting when I have time in the studio, then what I need to do is have multiple paintings to work on simultaneously that I switch out. And while one's drying, I work on the other. And that's what we're doing here. I'm just checking the comments to see if there's anyone who's got anything to say specifically, but it's like we're pretty good so far. Okay. Again, I'm going to tape my edges on this one. This one is going to be a wash. So this is a simple idea, but it's challenging to actually produce a nice even wash. And what a wash means is when we take a color and we make it smooth all the way down the image, like maybe a background or something. So there's not like big blotches of edges where like the colors change or things like that. So we want it to be a smooth gradation. And what that means is changing from one color or one value to the next. So a wash is a technique in watercolor that you will use just a whole bunch. I'm talking like a lot, a lot, a lot. This one's too sticky, I can tell. It's stuck to my paint too much. I need more lint. All right. So and you can decide if you want to go over the edge of your paper with the tapes. You have a smaller border too. You've got options. So a wash, yes. A wash is, gosh, you're going to use it in so many paintings. And it's an important technique to master, but it does take time. Because like I said before, when we are, when we're painting with watercolor, we're really trying our best to manage the content of our water and the ratio of water to paint and make sure that we're not kind of introducing more water or more paint in a currently painted area. Because if we do, then we're going to have some results that we aren't wanting or expecting. Get my last piece of tape on here. And yeah, I could have, you know, produced all of these pre-taped, pre-cut pieces. But I think it's important to go through all the steps that it takes to require, to all the steps it requires to make an art piece. Because that may not be really available knowledge to everyone viewing or people who are starting out. And a lot of art making is mysterious. I mean, unless you've done it before, it can be a very challenging thing to just think you know what you're doing, right? So that's why it's important, I think to go through the steps, even the beginning steps, like that trick with the lint on the tape. I'm part of a couple of different artist groups on Facebook, and some of them are beginners and some are more advanced. But in the beginners groups, there's always questions about like, why does my tape tear my paper? And there's a couple of reasons. It's because it's too sticky. Or perhaps you have too much paint seeping through, or it could be that you left the tape too long. So there's a number of different reasons why. And I just wanted to address that. Right, I think let's go ahead and let's go ahead and paint our wash. Pick two colors you like that will go nicely together and will blend from one to the next. If you choose orange and blue broncho colors, like I get that. But in the middle where you transition from orange to blue, it's going to be brown because of just the way color mixing works. So you have to be prepared for that outcome. For me, I'll be choosing a reddish color. It's like it's called alizarin crimson on my palette. It's this kind of maroon color and this violet, which is actually a royal amethyst. So that's what I'll be choosing for my colors. And in order to do a wash, the bigger the flat that you have, the better. If you have a bigger flat than a half inch, I know they're sort of expensive to have like an inch flat. But if you have a bigger one, you're going to be more successful. If you don't, and you have this regular size half inch brush, that's what I'm going to use. Our first step is to wet the surface, all of it. We don't want it stopping wet, but we want it damp. Okay. So we're going to just paint some water over the whole thing. If you have two water buckets, like I'm doing, you'll want to use the clean water. All right. See, I can see that it's wet, but it's not super wet. It's just damp. Okay. And now I'm going to pick my alizarin crimson, which is my maroonish red. And I'm going to start at the top and just put that in. And then you see it starts to fade as it goes down. And I'm going to keep going all the way down. Now this is a gradation. It's a gradation. And that means it's starting from dark and going towards light. Next, you can leave it that way if you want. But I'll be taking my purple, which is the royal amethyst. Another color for purple that they call it in paint is dioxocene purple. So there's a violet too. But before I do that, I'm going to go ahead and wipe off the paint on my tape. Like I said before, I want to try and keep that off. It's just going to be a little easier to keep things clean later. Try not to touch your painting like I did. It's all right. Okay. So I've washed my brush. Let's see, is there a glare? I want to try and move my light a little bit so you can see. Okay. And now while it's still damp, we're not going to wait too long. Let's get some of our next color, which for me is this royal amethyst. And before I put it on here, I want to test it on my paper on the side. So I've got my test paper. I just want to test it. Like I want to see is this water amount about the same as that? It feels watery, more watery. So I'm going to dip back into the paint and test. Oh, that's too painting. Okay. Can you see the difference? One is like real watery. One is like basically black. It's so dark. I need kind of the middle ground. So I just need to get a tiny, tiny dip of water. And what that means is I'm going to what I call dip a toe into my water. So I'm just going to dip the corner of my brush into the water, just the corner, not a lot, just enough to soak up a little bit of water. So you'll hear me say that dip a toe in and we're going to add that to what we've already done on a little tester spot here and test it out again. And that's much better. It's like in person, you can see the difference because one is pooling just like almost black purple and the other one you can see the color. So while it's still damp, I'm going to start at the bottom and move my way up. Oh, I'm starting to get streaks. What am I going to do? I'm going to wash my brush and get more water on my brush. And then I'll start at the bottom and that should help smooth on the way up. And once I get to a certain point, I can go back down and then I can go back up and this is kind of spreading it out. And like I said, if you had a wider brush, you would probably have the best success with a wash. I have some brushes that are, oh, you know, two inches wide. Those are for bigger paintings. So now I'm basically kind of while it's still damp, I'm kind of going in and adding a little bit more red and going back down. You can't let a watercolor that you're painting and you're trying to do a wash linger too long or it will really just dry up. And that's going to be a problem for what you want to create. And I want it to be really dark down here. So I'm adding some more washing my brush. And then I'm going to kind of spread this out a little bit. All right, I'm liking this. And while it's still damp, I'm going to use some salt on it just to give it a little interest. So I'm going to get a pinch and put some salt on it. And this is really going to work best on the areas that are still damp. So it's important that right after you've done the wash, you add the salt. And right now, it's just going to hang out until it dries. And the salt should have some reaction with the pigment and the water and make like little starburst. So we're going to let it sit there for a minute while it dries. And then once it's dry, we can brush it off. Before I go into the next one, I'm just going to wipe off some of this. I don't trust that the tape is going to hold it all back. And that's a really dark pigment. So I can't fix it if it goes through the tape. Oh, you're already starting to see some of the little speckles that the salt's creating. Oh, yeah. So the recording, I had a couple people ask, the recording will be available on the museum's Facebook page under videos. After this is completed, it will show that. So like since it's live right now, when you go to the video page afterwards, you'll see a place you can watch it. I want you to see if you can see those little speckles kind of starting to appear. And I definitely see it more in my in-person kind of view. And so I'm trying to let the camera focus on it. I think it'll be nice. All right, we're setting it aside to dry. That is two. Is this one dry yet? It's kind of dry. Let's go ahead and do this one. So this is the one we talked about earlier. It's the reverse painting. And before you paint, here's what my recommendation is. Use your pencil and draw out something. So what we're going to try and do is draw, like imagine some long, thin trees, trunks, and then like the little bushy top canopy and the ground below. Okay. So we're going to try and draw that outline. And then we're going to paint outside of the tree space. So like this color that we painted is going to be our tree space. So imagine that this is like my tree branches here. And try to give some variety when you're drawing, like you want to have some that are closer together, some that are further apart. And I'm going to make three. And then I'm just going to kind of like connect the canopies of these trees with my pencil. I want to see if you can kind of see it because on my side, the recording is hard to see. But I wanted to see if you can kind of see if I moved a little closer. And then this is key. You want to make sure that there's a couple of spots in here that like there's little peek-throughs of the paint that you've already done, where like the light behind it is peeking through. This makes it more interesting to look at. All right. So I want to tell you what we're going to paint. We're going to paint the outside of this, not the tree picture itself. I missed a question. Oh my goodness, I did. Different kinds of salts. Do we get different kinds of reactions? And yes, I will show what it looks like when it's finished. Yes. So this salt here is iodized table salt. But the flakier the salt, like I had some that was this like nice kind of super dusty flaky sea salt that's ground up smaller. And it produces completely different looking stars for specs. Like this is iodized table salt. Let's see if you can see it. Okay. And it makes these tiny, tiny little specs, which I think are really pretty. But yes, different kinds of salt will produce different kinds of effects. They're all going to be similar to this, just different in size and kind of shape. That's a great question. For this one, yeah, I can show you a picture, I guess. Well, I don't know if I can. Let me show you an example. I'll paint on this and you'll see what I mean. And then you can decide how you want to do yours. I'll be using for this one my round brush because I want to make sure it's, I've got some details in here. So I wet the brush first. And then I'm going to go in with like this alizarin crimson I used before this reddish color. And I'll probably use a little bit of the purple as well. What I'm trying to do now is I'm trying to get enough paint already made here from my kind of dry paint sections. Get it like ready so that I can just dip into it when I'm ready. You know, I don't have to like constantly work the paint that's on the palette. I need to have like a little well of paint that's already ready. So I'm going to go in and paint around my trees. And I start by painting the outline. And then I fill in. Sorry, I think I went off screen there. So I'm painting my outline with my little brush here. And then I'm going to fill in. Hey, and while this part is still wet, I'm going to add some of that purple because I think that'll be nice. Wow, that's dark. Okay, everything's fine. We're all good here. We're good here. We're just going to give it a little adjustment, which means that I rinse out my brush, get some water on it just a little bit. And I'm going to kind of move it around a little bit. And that's going to be a little bit less like intense because right now it's a big dark spot. You can have some dark spots. That was just a lot more pigment on my brush than I probably should have had. And these are kind of little dark spots where the dark sky is showing through the trees, which are lighter in front. Is it starting to kind of look like something? Kind of watercolor paint. Do I like best? I've got a couple brands that I like. So a lot of the paints in this specific palette range from Grumbacher, which you can get like mid-range paints all the way up to nice paints. You know, they're more professional grade. I also like Windsor-Newton for some of their pigments. They also do like what I would call student grade and intermediate and professional. So different grades. And what that means is that the pigments are going to have, the paints themselves are going to have more pigmentation as you get more expensive in the pigment. Like if you buy a professional grade paint, there will be more pigment in there. So it's going to look nicer. It's going to cover better. It's going to wash better. Some things that people don't often realize is if you're struggling with some of like, if you have student paints and you're just like, I just can't get this to wash, it will not wash. And make it even wash. It's probably the quality of the paint. Because if you've practiced enough where you think you know what you're doing and then it won't work, yeah, it's the quality. Also, I'm a big fan of Daniel Smith. They make similarly beautiful paint. And I have a number of paints from that maker in this palette. And then there's one called American Journey that I think it's an older brand, but I have some old paints and they're still good. So like a little bit of both. But I usually stick to Windsor Newton, Grumbacher, or Daniel Smith as a general kind of thing. So now I'm just kind of going in and adding some little details to kind of make it look a little bit more like some trees. And so this is kind of like an illusion, you know, that's the idea is that we're painting. We're really not painting the item itself. We're painting the thing around the item. And that's what's creating this illusion. I'm going to try and come in a little bit on the edges on a couple places to just make it look a little bit more. I don't know. Realistic is not the word I'm going for, but like it has a life on the outside of the outside of the picture plane. So you can still manipulate these paints while they're wet. Give some adjustments in there. It's kind of a funny technique. And I think it looks really strange right now. When you pull off the tape, it kind of has a reveal, which I think is nice. You can also go back in with like a really nice set of markers that won't bleed. Are you like, I like micron markers. They're archival, which means they're going to be waterproof. They won't fade. They won't cause damage to your artwork. But I like using these. I wouldn't use it on anything wet. But I like use the micron to kind of go in and add detail to things. So that's something you should do later if you want. If you don't have a micron and you let this dry, you could use whatever marker you have that's super thin or like a ballpoint pen if you wanted to. I'm going to wash my brush and we're going to go on to the next one. We've got about 45 minutes before we're done tonight. So in that time, we're going to do our last two. And one of them is going to be a tape design. So I'm going to leave that one up to you on how you design your tape. I'll show you. And the other one's going to be a flower, just like a really loose, organic flower. Okay, I think I got most of the questions that are in the chat, but I just wanted to check. Someone asked a question earlier. I want to see if I can answer for you what I'm trying to produce. I'm going to see if I can share my screen so you can see exactly what it is. Sorry for the quiet while I was trying to figure out like what I'm doing. But you these are the images that I created for this class. So you can see this one is the one with the salt. Okay, this one's the kind of reverse or negative painting with some trees. This is the one with the tape design. So we're going to use tape to create some kind of design. It doesn't have to be geometric like this. It can be up to you. We use tape to make our design. And then this is going to be our kind of organic flower that we'll go through. This is the last one we're going to do because it's really up to you on how you paint the flower. So hopefully that kind of gives you an idea of what all we're trying to achieve tonight. But this one's next. And you know what? This one that I made here, I'm pretty sure I used that flaky sea salt on this one. So you can see how big the stars are. It's a really fun thing to try out different kinds of salt. You know? Again, we're going to fold our card to get ready for the next part. And like I said, this time I'll be doing the tape design. You can get so creative with this. So you may need scissors for this if you want to have thinner tape. I am going to cut some of my tape. So what I'm going to do first is I'm going to tear off a piece that I like, and I'm going to get lint on my tape. And then I'm going to cut it. I'm not going to cut it first. So I've got this piece here. Lint. Oh, drop my scissors. Excuse me. Okay. And now I'm going to cut this. So when I cut it, I like to put tape on, like stick it on my surface and then go in and cut it. Because I think that's the easiest way to do it. I'm sticking this part down. Now that I cut that part, I can keep going. It's a little too tight. Oh, we'll make do. Now if you have thinner tape, you don't have to cut anything. But I want some thinner lines in my design here. All right. Important thing to note. The side that you cut, don't use that side. Try not to use it because you may have some little hanger offs like this. It hangs off. Okay. And I'll start with this here. I'm just going to make a rhombus. You know what? I'm going to move it. Whatever design you want, you can kind of crisscross them. So they're just, you know, a lot more organic. I just happened to cut the right length. That was pretty amazing. I wasn't expecting that. Sometimes things happen like that, which is nice. This one's not right. Oh, I pulled it too fast. That's another key thing to remember is we got to make sure we pull our tape a little slower. A little tiny diamond this time. Also, if you finish anything in our class tonight and you want to share it on our Facebook and the comments, I think that would be great. I'd love to see it. I'm going to do another one real long so I can put them on the outside. In fact, you know what? No, I'm not going to cut these. I'm just going to put them on. So add the lint. Okay, I missed a spot. A couple more. I'm going to be using a similar technique to the wash on this. I'm not using kind of that wet-on-wet technique of the wash. And have you heard me talk about wet-on-wet yet? Wet-on-wet is a technique in which we have a wet surface already, and then we add a wet paint to it. And it just spreads out evenly. So that's really what we're trying to achieve for this one. Now, you could go geometric, of course. And you could paint your paint onto a dry surface. If you do that, you'll get hard edges, which sometimes we want hard edges. But when we want soft edges, what we need to do is make sure that we have a damp surface. I've noticed a little spot that's not quite right here, so I'm going to fix it. It's just a little not straight. Also, I still do this. But before, I really use a lot of masking fluid, which is like, it's kind of like rubber cement in that it is sticky. It makes a film. You can rub it off later. It masks your surface. So if you're trying to keep an area of your painting white, that kind of thing is good for masking fluid. It's kind of expensive, though. And there's a big learning curve. So a lot of times I'll just use an X-Acto knife to cut out what little piece of tape I want. So let's do our wash. A little space there. Let me open up. I forgot to do that. I don't want this to get wet back there. On my work table, I've got this non-slip stuff underneath. I've got like a clear acrylic piece of, well, acrylic plastic. I like that because it doesn't get the wood on the table messy. But also the non-slip is really nice. So I'm paying directly onto my surface. But everyone's work surface is going to be a little different. All right. I guess I'm going to use the round for this. I could use either way, but I just feel like the round will be fun. So let's pick our colors. I'm going to use blue at the bottom, kind of a greenish color in the center, and then like a pinky purple up here. It's kind of the colors that I just like the most. So first things first, we got to get everything wet in here. I just want to see if we're all kind of on board. No new comments. So I think we're good. I think buying paint is such a challenging thing too, by the way. Someone was saying earlier like, well, you know, what paints you like best? It so depends on the person. There's some folks in our like Facebook group who like certain brands that I'm not a fan of. And, you know, we all have different kind of ways of using these brands. So your mileage may vary, you know what I mean? But I will say that Windsor Newton, Grumbacher, and Daniel Smith have been widely known as good brands for a long time. And actually some of the ones I'm using here are academy grade, like student grade, and not professional grade. So, and they look great. Blue at the bottom. Let's pick this blue. I'm just going to kind of put it in there and see like how it looks. Ooh, that's exciting. I like that. Okay, watching the brush. And I'm going to add some other colors. Let's put in kind of a greenish color. The color I just used is called Windsor Newton, Windsor Blue, the green tone. It's complicated. But that's the color. And I do see there's some areas where it's kind of cooling up. So I just want to try and reduce the chance that it's going to leak. So I'm going to wipe the tape down. And then let's pick our greenish color. This one is American Journey's Andrews Turquoise, which is a little bit more opaque. Put it in here. Nah, nah, nah, nah. I want a different one. Let's do Holbein's Ice Blue. Ooh, I like this one. And you see, it just kind of spreads out and expands with that like water that's already in the surface. Up here, it's drier though because I can see hard edges. So I'm going to go back, wash my brush, dry it, get some clean water. And I'm going to add some more water to the top here because I want it to spread. And now I'm going to pick my pinky purple here. It's mostly purple. Who am I kidding? And so now's your chance to just kind of move things around with your brush while it's still wet. And see if you like it. Okay, now you may notice in yours this is happening too. There's little bubble in the center where it's kind of like bubbling up from the water. So I'm going to move it around a little bit. And if I want to make some areas darker, now's the time to put it in while it's still damp. I just really want it to kind of be exciting when I take the tape off. That's the whole goal. I guess I didn't mention Holbein. That's another brand. I don't have a lot of Holbein paints, but I do really like their Ice Blue. Super pretty. Okay, before it gets away with me, I got to dry off these areas near the tape because I really just don't want it to spread just like before. Do my best to keep it from spreading. There may still be some spreading back there, but I mean, that's the best we can do on this. I will say if you're painting with like acrylic, which we can talk about some other time because I'll do some acrylic painting too at some point in the series. When you do this, if you paint with acrylic and you paint a white layer first after your tape, let it dry, then paint on top, you won't have any spillage because that white paint is going to create like a barrier. But with watercolor, it's difficult to do that because if you use white paint on top of the paper, then let it dry, then paint your pigment colors on top of it, it may mix in and create kind of a strange milky sensation because you can reactivate watercolor paints by painting on top. So yeah, not a great solution, but that's what we got. All right, we're going to let this one dry and in a minute, we're going to undo all the tape. So we've got about 30 minutes left and I'm going to fold my last one here. This one's going to be a freeform flower, but I'll show you how to make one. It's going to be very organic. We're not going to even draw the flower. Of course, if that gives you a little bit of anxiety like, oh, I can't draw the flower. Of course, you can draw the flower. I just thought, you know, for some people it's freeing to just like paint, you know. So I'm one of those people. I like to just go for it. I will be making a little border. And the reason I do this for each one is I just feel like it's, it makes it look more finished when it's complete. If you do this, like say you want to make cards for people going forward, then what you could do is I want like a smaller border. You could either do what I'm doing here and move the tape to make it a smaller border or you could buy thinner tape or you could cut your tape. You have variable different sizes to work with. Tape comes in different sizes. It comes in, you know, half inch and quarter inch and all that. I'm just eyeballing this to kind of get like half on, half off of the paper. So I have what I would say is like half of three quarter inches, which I don't know what that measurement really would be called. Not off the top of my head, but that's the width of this margin. Alternatively, if you don't like to paint with tape because it fights you when you're trying to take it off, I get that. And something you could do is you could paint a card to the edges, cut the edges nice and neat, and then apply it to your card. You know what I mean? Like glue it on when it's totally dry. You just want to use like, oh, like a gel medium or something that won't cause any kind of discoloration. A gel medium is a kind of a sticky stuff that we use in acrylic paint, but it can work for paper too. All right. Are you ready for the flower? So for this flower, I want to start by just, I'm going to paint with water to create the flower. I'm using my round brush because I want to have more like movement. And this is the one that I'll probably go back in and actually use this tiny brush later on. So that's what this is for. But I'm going to make kind of like a lily, you know? So I'm just kind of making this like blobby shapes here that are going to be my petals. In your own home, you might be able to see the light reflecting on the water that you put there. I can see it on mine. It doesn't come through on the camera all that well, but that's okay. Now I'm going to use kind of an orangey color. And I'll be using, my orange is not technically named an orange. It's Grumbacher cadmium red light, but it looks super orange, right? And I'll also be using Grumbacher cadmium yellow medium, which is a yellow that I really like because it is serious business. So I'm going to drop that in and you just see how it starts to spread in the watery spaces. Look how natural it does. It's just like, hey, we're organic. I love it. It's so beautiful already. One of the things I really love about watercolor is just how like you can just let it be. Just like put it down, see what happens. Oh, it's spreading around. I'm going to try and put some darker areas kind of near the edge here. And then I'll define the shape of my petals with this darker color, which means that I'm kind of drawing the edge of the petals around the edge. It's kind of like, oh, that's a big puddle. When I have a big puddle of water, I got to get at it immediately and soak it up. And I'm not rubbing. I'm literally just pressing. I'm taking, this is a cotton towel that I use all the time, but I'm just pressing nearby because if it has too much water, it's going to be a problem for a couple of reasons. So, all right, you've saved the day. We're good. We're still good. All right, I'm going to pick up my orange again. And what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to create, like, I'm dragging my brush partially on the wet surface and partially on the dry surface of the paper. And that is creating that hard edge on the outside and the blendiness on the inside. And you can go back in and add some more. Like, I wanted some more down here because that water just kind of soaked it all up. And we're going to do one more up here. The water just takes over and does whatever it likes. And I love that. Okay, y'all, we're going to let this dry. Oh, you know what? Take it back. Let's put a little dark center in here. So whatever darker color you have, you could take like that red and add another color to it to make it darker. I have two reds on my palette, which is one is the warm red, which is that orange. I told you about the cadmium red light. And the other one is this alizarin crimson by Grandbacher. And I'm mixing them together to make just like a deeper, I wouldn't say true red because it's still kind of a cool red. There's a difference, you know, between certain reds like some reds are cool and some reds are warm. And the tone of the red like that matters about how they mix to make other colors. But I'm mixing it a little bit here. And I'm just going to go in the center and see if I can kind of just make some little darker areas before it dries a little bit, because we want it to kind of look like it's deep in there. All right, we're going to do one more thing. There's a couple of spots in here that need some light help because they're just kind of empty. So we're adding or just taking some water, clean brush with water. And we're just going to like kind of move the brush near the things that are wet and let it just spread. And this is called softening an edge. So I have a hard edge here and I've got a wet brush. And I'm just moving it next to it. And then I'm going to do the same here. I just want to soften some of these lines. That means I'm running a clean wet brush next to them. And it just smooths out that line a little bit, makes it a little bit less hard. I think I need, you know, those, and a little bit of this statement that come out, I think I need that. But like, I have a problem because I hadn't really planned for it here when I did that, right? So here's something you can do. This is a thirsty brush techniques. And what we're going to do is we're going to wash our brush super good. But we're going to use the flat one. Okay, this one, because we want to make a line. So we're going to use the edge of the brush to make kind of a line on the paper. But we need it to be super dry and super clean. So it soaks up the paint that's there. So I'm going to wash it first. And then I'm not going to, I'm not going to hurt the brush, but I will wrap it in my cotton and press it, like, really pinch it hard. Okay, so now it's thirsty, right? And I'm going to go in and just start, and I have it upright with just the very tip of the brush flat edge on there. And I'm just going to kind of move it forward. And I've created a little clear spot in there. Yes, I have some extra paint here. I can still fix that. Not worried about it. I'm going to do it again. And again. And I just always wash it and press it. And then, okay. Now what about this little part that I messed up a second ago? That's okay. All we need to do is take our round brush and just incorporate that little mess up into the edge of our petal here. That's fine. And this little edge here, I still want it to be lighter. So I'm going to try and use the thirsty brush on it, but I'm not going to push it this time. I'm just going to press it against the edge. So I'm trying to lighten it with a tiny bit of water. So I've got clean water and I'm rubbing it against that surface. And then I'll do one more thirsty brush there to make sure that it's picked up everything. And so once this is dry, I can go back and define those. Oh, I'm glad you liked that. Good. The thirsty brush is, it's one of those techniques that has saved me a lot of heartache, y'all. Because you don't always plan everything out when you're painting. You're just like, this is fun. And then later you're like, oh, I wish I had a little spot there or I could remove something. This is like one way to erase. Another way to erase is to use a natural sponge like this. We want to make sure it's damp at the beginning. So it's because they come, they're kind of crunchy. You got to like dampen them, make them soft, and then you dip it in water. And I'll show you a spot here. So I've dipped mine in water and it's clean water. And you can take this and just press it against an area that you want to lighten. And it's like an eraser. You don't rub it necessarily. You just press it and it will pick up some of that pigment. And you can do the same thing with thirsty brush technique, similar to that with your, with your sponge. It just depends on the shape of your sponge. I have one particular sponge. It's like razor edge thin. This one is one I use for thirsty brush sponge technique. And then this one is what I use for kind of erasing. So different shape sponges for different things. So how about sponges? All right, y'all. We're going to let this dry for a second. We'll come back to it and we'll finish it up. And but while it dries, the reason I'm letting it dry first is because I want to paint a background and I want to come in with some details like some spots and to outline the stamen of the flower. So in order to do that, I have to let everything fully, fully dry. We got to be patient. It's hard. I know, but we got to, let's go back to some of our others and just reveal. Okay, so we're going to see if we want to do anything else with them. Let's just like reveal our tape. So when you pull tape before you pull it, we want to pull it at an angle. So I want to pull it down and then away, like this, away from your picture. Slowly. Don't get in the rush. If you go too fast, it can tear your paper and then it will all be very sad. Slowly and at an angle. This is key. Oh, look, this one's on top of that one. So I got to start over here. That's okay. Guess I shouldn't notice which one was on top of which. There we go. Even with all the lint on my tape, it is still pretty sticky. So that lends an important part. And this is the one I did with salt. And you can see some of it where it was really damp. It really took on to it. And some of it was still kind of light and not as wet. Did not take on to it as much and created a different look. I'm just rubbing off the salt because I just have to know what it looks like now. Hey, and be aware when you do that, look at your finger. You've got pigment on your finger, which is fine. But don't expect to have that finger clean for other stuff unless you wash it. I'm just going to cheat a little bit and put it into my water bucket. Wipe it on my sponge. And we're clean enough. But it's just important that you realize when you have pigment on your finger. So you don't, so you don't infect the white spaces of your, of your painting. And then, oh no, what happened? Like, no one likes that. So, all right. Slowly into the side we go. Oh, I think this turned out super nice. I'm really happy with it. Well, I say that now, but I haven't seen all the signs. So maybe I should just calm down a little bit. Okay, I've got some tearing here. So I'm going to go a little slower. Just a little slower. Okay. I think we're safe. If you start to see tearing, you just have to slow down. That's the key thing. And remember that angle helps. Pulling at the angle like that really helps. I always hold my breath. That turned out super nice. So interestingly, the salt where it was darkest, I'm sorry, the salt where it was driest up here in the red, made these little dark, tiny circles with a light center. And down here where it was wettest, it created these beautiful, like snowflake looking things. So this is just a testament to the different ways that table salt can can react to your paint, depending on one, the pigment, two, the amount of water, and three, the type of salt. So I think this is super fun to experiment with. It's pretty just on its own. All right. And this is my first card all done. So I'm going to slide. And this one's dry. So I'm going to peel off the tape here. And then we'll have just enough time to finish our last one. But I just wanted to make sure it was dry enough before I started painting on it. Because what a nightmare that is when you're like, oh, I'm painting. And then all of a sudden, oh, no, the paint's mixed into this other part. And like, so frustrating. Especially if you have an orange, which is what I have on my flower. And I plan on using it like a lime green. That's just going to make brown, y'all. And I don't want a brown flower. Like, I'm sure brown flowers could be very beautiful. But that is not what I'm looking for in this specific picture. So I want it to be orange and green. I've got to make sure it's dry enough. That's what I'm trying to say. Oh, this one turned out good. When I say that, I'm really talking to myself about how the tape worked. Because honestly, like, if I can get the tape off without having, you know, like, tears and bleed through, then I am happy. So here's my final. It's pretty. It's kind of spooky. I like it. All right, let's tear off the last one. This one is, listen, if yours is not totally dry, don't tear the tape. Let's wait on this one. Okay. This feels dry enough to me. So I'm going to go ahead and paint the last little bit here. Okay. Now, here's something to remember. I said I wanted to have a green outline, right, like green background. But I wanted to be okay, I wanted to be kind of nicely smooth back here. But when it gets next to the flower, I want it to be a hard edge, because I want it to look like, so I'm going to turn this so it's easier for me. I want it to define the edge there. So when I'm painting this, I'm using spring green to paint. And it's like bright green. And before I actually paint it, I've got my little well here of paint that I've kind of like woken up. I'm going to just touch the tip of the brush to my towel. I'm not going to brush, press hard. I'm just going to touch it. And that soaks up a little bit of the water. So it won't be quite as damp. And then I just want to let go along the edge here. And once I've gotten the edge, then I can go back and fill in the rest. This is, you know, patience. And just hand-eye coordination on, you know, getting all that in. Now, I don't want these edges to dry. So I have to add my paint to it before it dries, or I'm going to have a hard edge there. So don't linger too long on some other area and not come back to that original edge line you did, or you will have a ridge there that you can, you're going to have a hard time getting rid of. That hard edge, integration, or excuse me, in a wash is going to make you feel a little crazy. So don't wait too long. And if you want to, you can move your brush around. So it's kind of interesting colors back there. Kind of interesting textures. I feel like this is the kind of thing where you need a steady hand where you're like really focused on what you're doing so you don't end up talking as much while you're painting. So I know it goes kind of quiet while I'm focusing on not breaching the edge of the petals here. Try my best not to get it all mixed in. Because remember, I don't want to mix my orange and green and have brown. It's not what I want. But, you know, that's why I'm using this round brush. Because it's the kind of brush that can get those real tight edges and corners. But I can also kind of spread things around with it on the side, if I kind of angle it to the side. So it works pretty well. Before this dries, I'm going to take one of my other colors that I think will look nice with that green. And I'm just going to kind of drop in some little sections that I think will look like kind of cool. That's too dry. What am I going to do about that? I'm going to rinse my brush, dry it, but not completely just, you know, get most of the wetness off. And then I'm going to rub my brush around the edge of that to create a softer edge. This makes things look like it's further away. Kind of like when you focus on something like in a picture and the focus is in focus. I've said that too many times, but the subject is in focus. But then other areas are less so. And that's because they're in the background, right? Well, that's what we're doing here with our like brush technique. So I rinse my brush. I wipe off some of the water. I just wipe off a little bit. And then I just rub the edge of the brush against the edge of that pigment I just put on. And that's called again, softening edges. And I want to continue this back through here because it just makes it look more cohesive like it's meant to be there. Oops. Pick that up. I'm going to use the thirsty brush to pick that up as it got all mixed in. And then again, I'm just kind of softening this a couple more places. The color I'm using is again, that whole beans ice blue. I find myself just like drawn to certain colors and I use them a lot. And that's one of them. One more little spot. Maybe two. I think I'll go from here across to here. And you know, I have to soften the edges. And I'll repeat again how I do that. I wash my brush. I wipe off some of the liquid of the water. It's still damp. And then I go back in and just rub the brush along the edge of what's there. If you rub too much, you'll take up some of your original pigment. So you've got to be a little careful with that. That's what happened here. So you know what I'm going to do? With my clean brush, I'm going to pick up that original light green, which is the spring green. And I'm just going to put it back in. And that's okay. I'm going to try and blend it with a little suction. All right. Let me wipe the edges here on my teeth. And then we'll do our finishing touches with my darker color, which is, I think I'm going to use purple for this because it's one of the darker colors I've got. But I am going to add a tiny bit of brown to it. Brown? Why? Because it's just going to tone it down a little bit. So it's like a mauve, like a dark eggplant color, not a mauve, but it's more like an eggplant color. And I'm going to start putting in just like some little dots here and there. Okay. I could go forward with that, but for now I'm going to pause. And I'm going to use that same color of, no, I'm sorry, excuse me, the same color we used for the inner part, which is a mixture of warm red and cool red, which was the cabbier medium light and the alizarin crimson together. I want to use that. And I'm switching to my super tiny brush. Always dampen the brush first, then pick up your pigment, test it on your paper, your side paper. And then I just want to kind of like draw in these stamen. It's important to me that they show up in here. And we'll get that colored in a second. We're going to make it that dark color that I used before. Oops, it's too much water in there. Better soak it up. This little tiny brush is not good for soaking up liquid. So I've got to use my bigger brush, just soak up the water that's in there. That's the, and then I'm just going to put a couple extra little like spots where I think like the lines would use a little definition. Remember before when I said that watercolor is about layering, you're seeing why now. I'm actually going to put in a tiny bit more of this darkness down here at the very bottom too, where all the stamen come together. That way it just seems more cohesive. Now this painting would be vastly improved if I had spent some time just really looking at a tiger or lily, right, like before or had a reference photo here while I was painting one. That would be a smart thing to do. But for now, I'm pretty happy with it. Oh, thank you. That's so kind. I've got some really sweet comments out here. I hope yours are just as beautiful. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they turned out great. Before I go, I know we're kind of cutting it close here, the nine o'clock limit, but I want to peel off the tape on this and see how it turned out. Oh, I got to start from this end, I guess. And remember it's tempting to pull the whole thing. Don't, don't be tempted. Don't do it. It'll just tear and we'll all cry. So take one piece at a time and remember slow and at an angle just like before. If you pull the whole thing, even though it's kind of like grouped together, it's going to be a bad time. Don't do it. Don't be tempted. Okay, what's next? I think this one's next. Slow. Oh, it's stuck there. Okay. Slow and at an angle. Oh, this one has like a little piece extra. Okay. This one, it's got some torn paper. I got to stop and go from the other direction. One of my paper tears like that, I just have to kind of redirect my plan. Okay. It tore a tiny bit. I'm going to be okay with that. It's, you know, for you, it's going to depend on how, like, are you going to sell this? Are you going to give it as a gift? Are you just going to keep it? Was this practice? Those kind of questions are going to dictate how you respond to a tear. During this whole endeavor, you have learned some new techniques and just had a chance to kind of be with your inner mind and explore what colors you enjoy seeing and painting with. I'm always surprised. I find out all the time new colors that I like. So many tips and tricks. I'm thrilled with this class. I can hardly wait to try all these beautiful pictures. Thanks for being so upbeat. Oh, that's really sweet. Thank you, Penny. Wow. You know what? I love to hear feedback, critical or otherwise. And I will say thank you because that was a really kind comment, Penny. I really like painting. I like teaching on both. So I'm glad that comes through. And I'm glad you've got some good tips and tricks. And some of these techniques that we use, we'll be trying to use in other watercolor painting classes. So you'll have a leg up on those. This one turned out pretty good. I've got one little spot here where it bled through, but I'm not going to worry about it. I could, if I wanted to, I could go back with a tiny, tiny brush and not try to erase, don't try to erase, don't do it. It's going to be a bad time. But I could make some little, like, you know, changes here and there to different places. That might be nice. I got one more to take the tape off of. And then I think we're going to be done for the evening. So while I'm taking the tape off, if you have any lingering questions, thoughts or comments, I want you to go ahead and put those into the comments on the Facebook live. That way I can respond to them before we end our program tonight. But if you don't have any lingering thoughts, comments or questions, then I guess I'll see you next time. Our next class is next week. And let's see, what are we painting tomorrow? I think it's watercolor. And I think it's sunset on the water. I think it's this one. I think this is what we're painting next week, on Wednesday. So I'll teach you how to do it. I was inspired to paint something like this because it's not super realistic, but it's also kind of, you know, a little bit of impressionism, which is what our current exhibit at the museum is. So that was the inspiration there. But that's what we'll be doing next week. And like I said, a lot of the tips and tricks that we talked about tonight will be implemented then. So, oh, thanks, June. I'm so glad you enjoyed this. The lip on the tape is fabulous. I'm so glad you feel that way. And Jay, yeah, it's that kind of thing can be a day-ruining event when you take off the tape of something you worked so hard, and it just like pulls up your paper. Like, literally, I feel tears in my eyes just thinking about a time since it's happened to me. So yeah, the lint is a big deal. And if you're wearing clothes that don't have a lot of lint, then you're going to need to get like a towel or something that lives in your studio or where you paint or your kitchen or whatever you're doing and have that towel nearby to use to get that lint. All right, here's my final. And the last ones here. I've got these. I think they turned out pretty good. I'm pretty happy with them. These are our final images from what we learned about our techniques tonight. And I'm still hanging around for just a couple of minutes for any comments. And Jason's get a dog if you need extra lint. I don't have a dog. I have a cat, but like it just some funny comments. Love it. Wonderful. Put some really nice comments in here. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. I'm going to switch back to the face cam so I can answer any of the last questions and then I'll sign off in just a moment. Maybe one more minute. I still see there's at least 20 people who are watching live. So maybe you have questions. See you next week, NJ. Thank you. Questions. Well, I just thought I'd give you one more minute just in case. It's all been great. I hope you had a great time. Join us for more art and sips at home from the Llama Museum Wednesdays at 7.30. That's everything. So thanks for watching.