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Supplies for Next Week

Lesson 18 from: The Magic of Watercolor

Molly Murrah

Supplies for Next Week

Lesson 18 from: The Magic of Watercolor

Molly Murrah

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Lesson Info

18. Supplies for Next Week

Lesson Info

Supplies for Next Week

so let's go on to our supplies for next week and one thing you should do is have this done before class on friday and haven't done far enough ahead so that it's completely dry before we start class on friday and that is on an eighth sheet paint that sheet of paper with something you know paint a landscape if you want to I would just do a really good strong colored variegated wash of a bunch of colors bleeding into each other and that kind of thing if you want to do maybe some leaves of something with weird you're going to want to put some highlights just get that painted and make sure it's bone dry before we start class next week and then you should want they have these hand these things on hand you want a few sheets of watercolor paper it's similar to what you've already discovered that you like to paint on the best your masking fluid and everybody in the class has their bottle of masking fluid from daniel smith you might want to have a quill pen or a stick that you've sharpened to a ...

point in your pencil sharpener ah something with a point on it that you can dip in your masking fluid you might want to have certain tools like that on hand as well and then salt we're goingto put salt down because salt ism ism major component creating various kinds of texture in watercolor and there's various kind and each one of them does a different things so if you want to go full tilt boogie and get the table kosher marguerite and sea salt go ahead I don't know that I'll have all four of those here because we have so much to cover but it's worth experimenting with and one of the things we're going to do when we talk about the salt and demonstrate with salt is again timing is everything if you put the salt on too soon it won't do what you wanted to do it all so we're going to put some on too soon so you can see why it doesn't do what you wanted to do and then we're going to put some on it the right time and then we're gonna put some on when it's too late so that you can see the difference in what happens about your timing you want some sort of transparent or white candle that you can use as a resist on your watercolor paper because when you put the wax down on the paper it will resist the paint and you'll be able to paint over it and get a great texture without the paint soaking into the paper you're going to want a single edged razor blade because you could do a lot of things with a razor blade you khun scratch on your paper you can create tree branches you can create cat whiskers with a razor blade and an old credit card is a good thing to have are something that has the the strength of a credit card where you cut off a corner of it because you can do you can paint with a credit card it's very interesting the kinds of things you could do with the credit card you can paint one of the things that the easiest to do the credit card is paint birch trees and how you get that texture you khun dipped the card in various colors of paint on your palate and then scrape it along the edge of your paper and you'll get the texture of a birch tree you're gonna want to have a little bit of alcohol just straight you know rubbing alcohol and perhaps a small piece of rough sandpaper because you can also once your painting is painted if you want to go back and like I've seen people paint on rough paper and they'll paint a gn ocean scene and then they'll go back with a piece of rough sandpaper and they'll run it across the ocean and it'll lift up pinpoints of light on the tops of your waves and it looks like little highlights little you know thousand little highlights across the surface of the water a few people are asking online when you're referring to use a candle if you could use a crown a swell you can use a cran yeah you can use a crayon but you you want to use something that is either transparent or white or matches your watercolor paper yeah but I mean some people use colored kranz but something you can mix these media like nobody's business I mean you really can and butt if you if you are going to enter a water media show uh some of these resists methods like some people use uh most oh I'm missing pastels some people use pestilence and their paintings a lot but if it's a strictly water media show you can't do that so it's all about what you're looking for and whether you're going to enter it in the show that kind of thing it it all just depends it all just depends on what your use is going to be ultimately but I would have these things on hand and we'll do our best to get to a cz much of these as we possibly can and yeah I would leave this online a little bit toe let people copy it down um the salt is going to be a lot of fun and the masking fluid I would say salt masking fluid and perhaps your single edge razor might be the most if you get nothing else get those things because they're there would probably be the things that you might use the most okay and margie online is near death with trying to figure out what color to use for the scarf of the woman that we were doing she's painting it live and she just like would you please just ask molly what well you'll use with used for the scarf well she would use the lizard in crimson for sure I'm assuming that she only has the nine colors if she has more colors she might want to go to one of the quin quin colors quinn rose um what's what's one of the other colors I have on my palate I can't remember now see I'm one of those people who just goes for color but I've got my little handy thing here you know if she's painting it life right now let's ask her to send us a photo oh that would be great but I don't do with my palate think it's right here yeah here it is uh okay I have quinn violet on my palette which actually might be a very good color to use and I'll show you what that looks like on a piece of paper here the quinns air the staining colors and they're very very transparent that might work in certain areas down along here I have another color on my palate that I use a lot called opera that's it very lovely pink color she could probably put offer in there some and like in this area right here I'm not getting it strong enough because I didn't wet it I didn't think I was going to be using it needs to be pretty strong operas a great color it's a fugitive color it'll fade over time unfortunately now this color here is quinn rose there are so many pinks out there so many like few shoes and pinks and things like that that's much more red but she could mix this with a little bit of opera and get an interesting color but if they only have if they only have the nine paints that we talked about and our palette then she's really stuck with eliza and crimson which is this color right here and she would have to go in and add maybe a little bit of ah blue to it now that's dirty I forgot that had uh I made a brown out of that you can add a little bit of blue that looks still has some of that brown in it but that's why we did the two different primaries that's why we did the warm and cool primaries because you can't get pink in a warm primary you just can't it's not gonna happen so eliza rin would be the way to go and then she would just have to make it darker or lighter and perhaps add a touch of blue marty said what happened is the color got dirty so yeah he's like you will just have a dirty scarf and that's the way it is at least margie will live we don't know what the scarf is supposed to be you know actually go over it when and making an earth earth tones I mean you know there's just no right or wrong to this that she doesn't like the way something happened paint over it wait till it dries and then paint over it in another color but other viewers were just like painted over painted five times that's what molly said posted one painted five times painted five times now there are artists who have way more like my art my friend kay barnes I only have these three what I would consider very cool reds on my palate there more on the pink and few cious side and that's quint rose eliza in crimson and quinn violet and that's because I don't I'll paint something green before all painted that I mean I just they're not my favorite color's eliza and of course is a great color and I use it for everything but that's because it mixes so well with so many others and you can make wonderful purples with it and great brown's without you mix eliza rin with your sale oh blue green shade and you can come up with really great grace and things that border on being brown and stuff like that great darks but my first teacher the one that I went to greece with caroline buchanan I would say at least this much of her palate I don't know can you see that this much of her palate was taken up by reds in that range by cool reds in all of these colors along this sort of pink future red range and I ended up buying all of her paints that she suggested that we buy and putting him in the palate the way she should suggested we do it and then I ended up using maybe only four five colors on that palette the whole time I used that palate and I went well this pal it's not for me this pallet doesn't work for me I don't choose those colors so I'm going to create a palette that does work for me and then I went to another one and that one wasn't perfect either and this pallet is a is a combination of kay barnes palate and she actually has her own unique palate of colors at daniel smith and d n limb lee's palace and these are this is a combination of those two pallets together and that's how I ended up with this one and this one just works well to me if you look at this pallet let me turn it this way so it it's really got the range of colors in it I mean it's it's got your oranges and your cools it's got it's got everything really represented to me and so I'm stuck with this one for several years now without changing it I add a few colors here and there somebody will have a color like this cobalt eel I really love that color and I'm trying to figure out which one of these colors I'm going to get rid of so I could fit that went in but I use them all so much it's probably just going to stay right there in that little container these little containers are great because you can augment your pallor with them yes great and I have requested just because there are there are people out there around the around the world painting with us right now that that air just seeing your little examples as well if we could show some of the examples from here in our wife audience just kind of encourage people because there's a real range of what people are doing here I think that'd be great I'd like t there more you haven't you haven't seen him we'll keep this semi anonymous wow david that's terrific I think that's just great I loved what you did with the scarf with all the bright red everything you really simplified it and I think that's just fantastic for the brown I don't know what did you say was uh bringing opinion right that one indian red you must have mixed it with something really not really you just put it on pretty light yeah yeah no I love how you simplified that you've got a good drawing too then here's another one oh that's great well have fun seeing the same images just being absolutely this is c this is just so perfect because he's just done what he wanted to do with that image which was totally different from what I would have done and yet he made it so interesting and turned it into like an abstract of sorts it's really great and I love the eyes coming back you know you don't think it was oh thank you oh well perdita that's really good too your drawing is great great very good excellent I love all the little details excellent excellent lots of little stuff you see none of us painted the painting the face yet not even me somebody suggested a little bit of yellow just to begin tio what do you choose well they're a very you can use all kinds of things uh ted nut hall uses he uses um cerulean blue cat red light and yellow poker and you have cerulean blue and yellow loker on your palate those of the blue and yellow in your paper triads yeah but you could use your pyre old scarlett and what he would do now I'm going to try this this is not the way I normally paint but let me try it on here molly we have a question online what color would you use if you wanted to paint transparent bricks instead of using indian red for another yeah if if if that's all that you have on your palette if you haven't increased your palate beyond what the colors are that we've that we've put in our kid that would be your base color for sure but I would drop in yellows and I would when you know when it was wet if if you were now I'm not so sure I would paint every brick uh probably wouldn't hunt sure I wouldn't but you know you could do a little representational type of thing let me see if I can get some indian red up there I'm gonna paint on the back side of this you could do like you could do a break like this and just do it like a little representational and do maybe one and then add some yellow okker and do what next to it and you don't even have to paint every brick you know have some of it fade in with each other drop in a little blue find goetz and blew on my brush to get a little variation and not paint every single brick and not even paint the whole brick and just do like a little section to say okay that's a brick wall and then the rest of it is just like a wash of color you don't have to paint every single brick and every single white line of grout in between I mean that's not a very good example but it sort of gave you a new idea of what I'm talking about leave out as much as you can without diminishing what you trying to say and I know I keep saying what you're trying to say and I know that that's sort of on when it comes to painting but that really is what painting is all a pound and what are you trying to say what emotion are you trying to get your viewer to feel when they look at your painting that's probably the number one thing and if you go out and you take a bunch of pictures and all of a sudden you look at a picture and you go wow that moves me then that's the painting to paint that's what you should go to paint so let me try here now I I'm nervous to try this because I really have absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that this is gonna work but ted natale would go in and he would wet and he had run right down over the eye because you know eyes air never white the whites of the eyes are never white you always do some kind of a wash over your painting first and you do it over everything because the whites of the eyes are never white then I would go in now he puts things at an angle so that they just drips and runs just start dropping in some color I'll use the pyre old scarlett he uses uh kat red light which is probably a better color to use but well let's go with the pyros scarlett because that's what everybody's got and over on this edge where you've got some uh see I didn't cover that with water thought I did you might want it you sure yellow on the areas that you think would be more in highlight don't forget to let things drift and run now that's actually a pretty good under painting you see what I did here now that's going to dry way back and then you go in and you start adding your other details but you don't you don't try to paint perfect skin tones ah lot of people the very first thing that they put down is a green and ted nuttall will use a green too so let me see fighting I don't know if there's anything in here that's because skin tones actually often have a a green undertone in them yeah that's even better see that now I would let this dry completely and it'll drive way light it'll dry way light then you go back in and you start dropping in your colors in your in your stronger stronger tones I would put reds and greens and browns and lose and you know all kinds of things in there that eyebrow would not just be a brown eyebrow I'd probably start out with a little burnt cnn and I dropped some ultra marine and maybe a little purple and you know in the shadows in the eyes I'd put a touch of red and underneath the nose course you can't see underneath the nose but almost always under underneath the nose and on the tips of somebody's ears you put bright red bright red and that's what really brings the colors out I wish I wish I had thought to put that painting that I showed last week in but see that's now see that's interesting already that's very interesting and this I may actually go in and finish this now but it's got to dry this has to dry completely and it's actually this is actually see it's really it's really beautiful in person I'm sorry am I supposed to be oh yeah okay the colors air more subdued much more I don't know if you really can see that but and so when you look at this you're not going to sit there and go huh that face is green you're going to sit there and go wow look at all the colors in that complexion I mean so be wild and crazy with your colors it really really helps well that's what people sat there like a green a blue yeah you know we're just gonna paint with reckless abandon yeah no no even that little baby that I showed the picture if I had let me see you cannot should I try to go back can I try I can't go back right are we in q and a yeah waken do whatever we want let's go back in the presentation and I'll find that little baby because even that little baby had purples and it's taken a while oh you know what I'm going to escape and find it that way go yeah can you see all the colors in this face I think I see the blue green and look at the eyes I mean you know I made those eyes up lots of red lots and lots of read lots of blue there's colors all this is all yellow loker down here yellow car here all around the chin and everything had lots of blue in the forehead you just you were not flat we we are full of color and it really helps to put it in let me also you know other colors can reflect off it to exactly so just because we think I need to paint to pick the color of flesh and it's pink no not necessarily you stand in front of something red or blue or green you're going to get the reflection off the stand in it changes the color exactly and this this actually was this blue here actually was the color of this piping along this little you know thing that he would get out of the bathtub with and I went well you know I'm putting so much pink can flesh in rosy color in the baby himself that's a good color to put there because they're they're complementary to each other and so they play off of each other if it had been not a good color I would have changed it made it something else you know it but it worked in this particular painting it worked that the piping on that little sweaty thing was was blue now I completely change the background color I don't remember what the background color wass yeah this was a lot of fun I painted this entire painting and one day I got obsessed I got up in the morning I started it and twelve hours later it was done but it took twelve hours a lot of fun people are wanting you to see to finish up that face that you painted but I know you have to let it dry yeah it's got a dry before weaken and it's not it's still come back in three it's still very wet and the background back here is let me get my scrubber out and I'll start doing to the background what I said way probably needed to dio and he is one of my bigger bigger scrubbers get myself a clean paper towel I don't know that this is still dry enough but I'll give it a shot so there's a just a bright white reflection right in here and it's kind of an odd shape and there's that reflection there's one up here and these scrubbers again remember these scrubbers are great when you want a soft edge and that I definitely wanted to soft edge there so I'm going to go in and try to tone down these feathered sides of the branch and actually this isn't dry enough because I'm putting up pulling up little bits of paper fiber but for this exercise it's fine it really needs to be dryer before you start doing this yeah it's definitely pulling up paper fiber but even though I'm pulling up paper fiber I can do this and let it sit and dry out and I'd still be able to go back and paint over it later see that's cleaning that right up get some of this out you know what I used to do all the time when I was a kid I would sit down and we had you know I grew up in the time when you if you had four drivers you still only had one car and we had one tiny little ten inch tv way didn't get tv till I was nine years old so it was didn't even have it till I was nine but when the family gathered in around the tv after dinner I would take off my shoes and prop my feet up and draw my feet drawn my parents feet in their shoes just you know just draw there's just no reason not to and that's when a lot of my drawing skill came into being for me and I and I'm I'm I'm a fairly decent drawer I mean in my art class uh one of the things I'm known for is doing good drawings but that's because I started young and got my practice so is that what the movie is based on my left foot I haven't seen that movie and forever well it is the artist adaptation of yeah it is so I'm going back in with this scrubber and getting some of the detail that I lost when I put that paint down too soon now see that's making for a fairly interesting background that looks like a sort of blurred background back there and I think it's going to work I think it's gonna work out fine and yet there was a while there when it looked like a mess to me you can fix it you really can and I have to say I have to say one of the things that that I really want to encourage people to understand is that they shouldn't have too great an expectation of themselves in the beginning when they're just starting I mean my problem when I played the violin was that I wanted to paint it play it perfectly right from the get go and it just just have fun with the process don't look at the result enjoy the process because the process is a lot of fun whether you get a great result or not and if you enjoy the process and keep practicing the process you'll start getting great results every time and somewhere about two years ago I stopped being scared of painting I was scared of it all the way up until two years ago and somewhere along the way I got to the place where I just started realising everything I do is going to be okay you know I'm going if it doesn't start out okay I'm going to be able to fix it and if if I can't fix it well then I've got a great piece of scrap paper that I you know turn over and test my paints on I mean I just stopped being scared of it and so many artists have so much trouble you know they they get incapacitated because they're so scared of it and there's just nothing to be scared of its and yet I fell into the trap too I was scared for a long time a long time now I'm going to test where this is on the paper and it's still very cold you always test with the back of your hand you never test this way because you always have oils and things on your fingers here but you test with the back of your hand and it's still pretty cold which means it's still pretty dry so you know what I mean that would confuse everyone sorry sorry I've done that a lot when I've gone back and looked at the replace of these things I've gone I've gone you know you said paper when you meant to say brush I mean you know I I've done that a lot I don't know my mind is trying to stay ahead of my tongue and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't you go over the colors that you used to paint a face with I used the yellow poker I used cerulean blue I used hookers green that's what this green is and I used the pira ll scarlett so I use pretty much our colors except for the hooker's green because I knew I wanted some grain in there now when I get up to her face I hope it doesn't bleed it might so is it bracco cat I think it was kate who said she's become obsessed with painting I think that's great when her eighteen year eighteen month old isn't it begging for attention eighteen months my goodness well I am thrilled that she's enjoying it so much I'll see I just did something that's not in the painting at all but I mean in the photograph it all but I wanted to do it now I'm definitely using paints that are not in her palate so get creative with your palate can you show the original it's just a bit off the screen share so people see it great you know greg I loved what you did it definitely looked intentional to me exist in a world of vibrancy so yeah I just thought it was fabulous if you look at the paintings that I like our house it's the ones that are what old colors well that's I think that was great because I I just loved it thought it was fabulous you did a great job now there's some interesting things happening with this paint now let's get some of that pink in there somehow wei wei don't forget these are all going to drive back very light it's just what they do and like I say that's my biggest problem I figure one day before I die I'll get there so next week we're gonna make our sponge we're going to do that probably in the banter so that we have more time for just actually doing our little techniques and stuff like that in the class itself and rocco cat did a great job of making hers where does bracco cat come from I wonder I don't know she had to sign off oh she did while back probably that eighteen unfold okay this is looking pretty weird but it doesn't matter I'm sort of putting in color too soon but I think it's still gonna be interesting the backgrounds working okay I've got a really great mix of color in here yeah those mixed beautifully for data have you been painting at home at all you will ok that's about it I think for this right now otherwise I can't it's too soon to go in and other places this was the part that I thought was gonna be nerve racking for me but actually it's not that bad I don't mind it it's fun okay so are there any other questions and jason anything anything that I brought up in the class that people have any questions about they want to know more of our are we pretty much wound down looks like we're winding down funny wants to know that she's getting hard edges on her face how to avoid that is she painting on cold press good question honey are you painting on cold press that craig has been enticing them with a new creative text calendar so that kind of yes yeah that new calendars great can you hold your scrubber brush up to the camera so lime conceded just a short little stubby right brush just gets up and these air very they have a lot of tensile strength to them that you can't press it in and there just real stubby little little hairs little bristles and in a rounded shape and bunny responded that yes she is printing errors she's painting on cold press strathmore uh okay so well if her paper wasn't wet enough she'll get a hardline so and I don't know about strathmore I've never painted on strathmore before so I don't know how that paper paint one of the reasons that I just stick with the arches is because I just it just paints beautifully there are a lot of people online over the over watching you paint they were asking about using a hair dryer toe dry things faster do you do that you recommend it yes I do it at home quite a bit uh you don't want to get real close because it can shove the paint out of the way you want to hold it up if you have miss kit or a masking fluid on your paper it you really want to hold it up because you don't want that to get hot because it kind of melts into the paper and it's very difficult to lift later but yes you can absolutely you's a you's a hairdryer if you trying to save time but I you know obviously couldn't use one in this class you are sound guys and frustrated right what people are saying thanks really enjoyed the class see you next week I have to take off people are saving their money for the future classes because they're enjoying this one so much well I this is this this is my favorite class there and there's there's one of our students again kind of throwing in looks great david yeah the anonymous student no name david you know she put a name on my way so I actually there was only one person who I want to give people the option of being anonymous david works here so you know yeah well you know last week when craig was in the class and some of his some of his you know color tests in his color wheel and every day we're just fabulous they were put mine to shame I thought I was I thought he did an amazing job well you know everyone here is actually got more complete on that image because they weren't teaching a class you know right that's really fascinating to watch you know this's also really encouraging I think it's really important for people to see the imperfectly you know this is very imperfectly why of of loosening up believe me and its really amazing how much you managed to get through this is a medium that requires a lot of patients paint something you set it aside for twenty minutes half an hour I go do something else I mean I didn't I keep coming back to this particular class and preparing for it because I have to tell you there was so much stuff and then I sat there and I went oh my goodness if I if I try to get into all of this detail and everything there's just there's just no way it's gonna work there's just no way so what I had to it's do was say okay I'm just going to show a few different ways and let people pick the one they like and then they're gonna have to go out and learn it on their own because there's so much to drawing and understanding drawing and for shortening and and perspective and what you need to know about how all the pieces of parts of the face relate to each other and everything there's just no way I could teach that in a class where I also had to teach composition at the same time so I did I actually spent less time on drawing then I did on composition because composition is actually more important composition is more important than drawing opposition is something that you can cover in a short period of time then drawing which as you said is a class all our eggs exactly exactly we're getting lots of kudos molly saying you're a great teacher fantastic it's been wonderful people saying it's great to see your fixes because so many teachers just paint to be perfect instead of going back saying let's do this let's let's move this over there well that's not what I wanted now not the right color well we'll just blend it in so they're saying great thanks fantastic people got a brown phone drinking kids are calling it's four thirty it's four thirty someplace well if I get a chance this week I don't know if I will because I still have to prepare all the samples and everything for next week's class but I'll try to finish this five grand wonderful propose a uh the deal for for audience a so quickly show my uh my computer appear so folks if you go to flicker flicker dot com forward slash groups for its life ct watercolor that's where you can go to see all the images that very that other participants in your in your water car class have posted and this week in particular really great for people to finish the drawing of the woman with the scarf uploaded to flicker and and I think if we get some of you to do that we can probably get molly to commit to finishing our perone painting of this woman and applying to flicker but there's gotta be other people meeting her there too right and let's see how many different takes on this particular piece there are uh by the end of the week I don't know how to upload to flicker we'll help you ok I figured you would know we'll teach you that in the photo shopped for artists that were going to be running in april because there's enough of a demand out there with you know people who want to know how to use photoshopped my bet get their art in out up down left right well you know you khun ask for questions if you know like what would people be interested in and stuff like that to work that day but we have our entire online audience and true no that'd be a great class to teach and molly somebody here want me to mention how helpful the class has been seeing the brush on the paper has just been absolutely amazing and educational andi uh just loving it well it's one of the reasons and this is another reason I encourage people to join organizations painting organizations in the towns where they live they always bring in artists and these artists do demos and I go to every single one of these meetings I possibly can because just watching somebody paint is the greatest teacher I think I learned so much just watching somebody so check those organizations out none of them are very expensive the eastside association of fine arts to belong for an entire year and to go every single month and see a wonderful artist do a demo is thirty five dollars for a whole year it's not much so check them out they're worth it

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Watercolor-W2-Exercises.pdf
Watercolor-W3-Exercises.pdf
Watercolor-W4-Exercises.pdf
Watercolor-W5-Exercises.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Susan Mueller
 

Absolutely loved this class! I've been fiddling with watercolor for the last year, but have never really taken any art classes. This was the perfect intro level class in so many ways, covering basic principles of color, composition, etc. - and always in a warm, encouraging atmosphere. I learned so much about watercolor as a medium, and I would recommend this to anyone interested in getting involved with it. Would love to take a class with Molly again!

a Creativelive Student
 

I absolutely love this medium and have owned the material for about 5 or so years now, afraid to waste them. I've bought books but realizing I am both a visual and audio learner, this is the format for me. It is so important for me to be able to replay and review the information that taking a local course is just not as convenient as this has been for me. Molly is a delight to watch and listen to, she is such a wealth of knowledge. Thank you Molly and thank you CreativeLive!!! I am in love with this site.

Linda Berg
 

Molly is captivating! Her soothing voice exudes her love of watercolour painting! She is very organized and knows how to paint with watercolours and how to teach it as well. Not all painters can teach... I was drawn into her 'teachings', loved listening to her wealth of knowledge, and signed up for her course. Oh, I recommend it totally!

Student Work

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