Creating Depth and Texture

IN THIS VIDEO I show why I made the decisions I did in painting this large 5×5’ neutral abstract. I share what I do with the first several layers, how I get pops of color that are really interesting, and when I add collage pieces and acrylic skins.

CREATING DEPTH AND TEXTURE IN YOUR ABSTRACT PAINTING / In this video you’ll listen to how and why I made the decisions I did in this large 5×5′ neutral abstr…

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, it’s Adele. And in today’s video, I want to talk to you about how I went through stages of creating from the beginning to the end, this large five by five foot painting. And I went into it, knowing I wanted to have a neutral painting, but I also wanted some pops of color. So, how did I do that? When I go into a painting, I like to have some guideline about what I’m thinking about just to get started because after I get started, it can go off in a million different directions. But in the beginning… And it’s some of the things that I do are could be very surprising. So, let me tell you. Now, I start all my paintings with… Especially the neutral ones. And when I do white or neutral like this one with a dark underpainting. The first thing I do is I put a texture on it.

Because I love texture. So, I’ll put a texture over the whole thing and that’s just gloss gel. And then, I’ll let that dry. Then after that’s dry, I go over with a wash of raw umber, or you could go black, or you could do gray… Paints gray, anything like that, but a dark one. And then, I go over. And then, I start layering different colors. I know it’s neutral and I don’t want to just have one neutral color. I want to have a variety of neutral colors. And the reason is because I want the subtlety. I want you to… When you come up, when the viewer comes up, they can see the subtlety of this is just a little bit greener than this. And this is this a little bit down here. This is a little bit darker and you’ve got a lot of brush strokes going on in here.

So, the first thing I do is start layering over the dark background with just a certain amount, I’ll mix three or four different neutrals on my palette already mixed. So, I can see on the palette, they’re all different values. Some are a little darker, some might be a little greener, some a little grayer. But that’s what gives interest. So, I go over and I start doing that. And I only use one of those for a certain amount of time. I don’t want to go over the whole thing with just one color of the same color. So after I do that, I then stopped this painting around here with the neutrals. And then, I knew I wanted a really bright color somewhere, pops of color. And I know one of my techniques is that I put things on some of the first couple layers that I know I’m going to paint over.

I know it. So this, I mixed the exact orangy red that I wanted. And I use this whole area and filled in this whole area and this whole area down here of just that orange red. So I did first, painting the neutrals. Then I painted these two. And then, I went back and took several different… Those neutral painting… Neutral colors on my palette and started filling in and going over. I made a wash over here. I wanted it to be not opaque. I wanted you to be able to see certain areas. So, I made sure I went over it lightly at first so you could see through it. And then, if I didn’t want to see through it that much, then I just painted over it. This one, I didn’t paint over as much as I did this one, but I still left a couple of different areas where it just peaks through.

So, it’s that pop of color and that surprised, which is really cool. And when you do something with texture, the first layer, or some of the coats that you put on are [inaudible 00:03:50] those grooves of the texture. So, if I just put the paint brush over it, they’re going to show through, like this one here and over here. So, I did that. And then afterwards, I start going in with more detail, like some collage, some markings, all kinds of mark-making. So, what I did is that I covered up… Oh, let me backtrack a little bit. So, knowing I did that, the next step was I knew I wanted some dark areas, some really dark values. Again, knowing I’m going to go over them. So, I made one area here, one area here, and one area over here that was dark. And then, I went over after I filled all this in, I went back and went over it very lightly.

You can still see it underneath, which gives such of an interest. So, you have lots of layers underneath. So then, I went back to… Now, the stage was going to add some details. So, I started really thinking about composition and design, and where your eye goes all over the painting. So, I started with… Like Here. This is an acrylic skin, which I’m going to talk about in a minute. So, I have an acrylic skin. I have some collage and I love this. I put this down here. And I wanted to do this here because it brings in the red, it pulls your eye down here. And that’s one of the most important things in painting is where does the viewer’s eye go? So, you have to keep asking yourself that. So anyway, so I went over here, I added some collage here. And I wanted to add some black.

It needed to have some black, but I didn’t want a big thing of black. So, I added here and I added here some collage. And I wanted it to be the same shape. So that way, your eye goes from over there and it also comes over here. I added this linear line here because I wanted to have some line. And I liked it down here. Look how it brings your eye all the way down. I also added some china marker in white, which also add some subtlety. Paying attention to the subtlety, as well as the bolder areas is really important to have that combination. It’s like the perfect recipe. And then, I filled in here with some more acrylic skins. So, let me take… I’m going to pull this in. Let me tell you a little bit about acrylic skins. You can have all different kinds of acrylic skins.

And one of my favorite ones is when I mix paint on my paper palette. I keep all my paper pallets. And this is what I do. I go over it. I’m certain, I have a whole technique that I explained to… I’m going to explain… Well, in a future video, in Art with Adele membership, which I’m going to come to. I’ll show you exactly how to make things like this. So, you can do this and it would peel off, take a look. This was my palette. And I could peel this off and put it right on here if that’s what I wanted to do. How about that? So, it acts like collage, but it’s a really fascinating way. So, you can have your palette for acrylic skins. Let me show you here. You can do some drawings. I mean, some line work or some drawings.

You can also use stencils. I bought stencils and did this. I have the stacks and stacks of either paper of collage or the acrylic skins that I can add in order to put on here. Now, I’m going to take this off. It’s almost like a plastic film. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about if you’re at all interested in learning and hearing much more detail about, and watching me paint from the very beginning to the very end, I have an Art with Adele membership. So, please make sure you take a look, the link is below. And the wonderful thing is that it’s $15 a month, until the end of August. Starting September 1, it’s $25 a month. But think this, think of it’s better than art school because I teach you not only I explain what I’m doing, I’ll teach you so many different techniques.

And with knowing how to do so many different things. So, say you joined Art with Adele for three months. At $15, you get… It’s less than $50. That’s $45 for three months and you can get… Right now… Well, we have about 40 videos. We have a whole resource binder. We have creativity interviews and so much more. I go into so much detail. I want you to grow as an artist. So please, if you’re interested at all about what I’ve told you here, click the link below and come join Art with Adele membership.