Learn to Paint "ABSTRACT RIALTO BRIDGE" with a Palette Knife - Paint and Sip at Home - Step by Step

hi there i'm michelle the painter from berkshire paint sip and this is paint and sip at home [Music] all right so today we're going to be painting abstract rialto bridge and i'm going to be sipping on a little cabernet so let's get painting and let's get sipping all right so what i'm going to be using for materials today i have a stretched and primed 16 by 20 inch canvas if you're painting along with me you can certainly switch up the size but that's what i'm going to be using i will be using acrylic paint today the colors are titanium white burnt umber which i'll call brown mars black phthalo green i have a fire red burnt sienna which i'll call rust i have a chrome orange and a deep yellow and of course you can switch up those colors but that's what i'm going to be using for my tools today i have a standard number two pencil i have a number five round brush and then i also have a palette or a painting knife that is angled with two different lengths on the sides of it and if you're painting along with me you're probably going to want to have a cup of water for washing your tools as well as a paper towel for drying them and then down below this video i'm going to be providing you with a couple of additional resources that you can use during your painting process one of them is a link where you could purchase the same paint kit that i'm using so it'll be the same large canvas and the same tools and paint and all that good stuff so that's there for you and i also have a link where you can download a free image of the final painting so you could print that and use it as visual reference as you go along and there's also written step-by-step instructions there for you as well and that's all we're going to need today all right so what we're going to do for the first step is we're going to make a funky outline so what this is is it's in essence going to separate our water from everything else on the canvas so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to give you a couple of markers we're going to connect those markers and then that'll be all we do for our outline so on the right hand side of your canvas you're going to want to come up about a quarter of the way and make a mark so to know where that is you can visually say okay well this is about halfway and then you can just kind of find somewhere in the middle and make yourself a mark if it's a little high or a little low you're fine on the left hand side you're going to come up maybe i've just come up about two inches so i'm going to make a mark about there and then i'm going to make another mark that's about halfway up my canvas and not quite to the center so if this is kind of my halfway mark i can travel over to the right right right right right i'm going to stop about here but just so you can have a visual as to where my mark is if this is about your halfway point it's uh you know maybe about a third of the way from that halfway point to the edge of your canvas and then you can just make yourself a little bit of a mark so how we're going to connect these we're going to can connect this one to this one and this one to this one and we're going to connect these two with a slightly arced line so i'm going to do something like this and you can see i'm just kind of sketching it it doesn't have to be perfect and then i'm going to do the same thing from here to here it's again going to be a an arcing line but it's a really long slow arcing line so you can either start here or here whatever visually is easier for you to do i'm going to kind of start on my right hand side and i'm always keeping my eye on the prize which is that next dot and it might almost level off at the top whatever whatever happens happens and then that's all we're going to do for our sketch the next step we will be using this fun tool i thought we're going to use the brush but we're going to use this for the next step so you can just get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are doing the first layer on the top portion of our canvas i'm going to be using my palette knife the colors that i'm using are black brown rust and white and how i'm going to do this is i'm just going to have a whole lot of fun but i'm going to put my dark colors on there first and then i'll use my white to kind of blend them in a little bit so here i go i'm gonna i'm using right now the larger or the larger angle of my brush my brush i'm gonna call it a brush the whole time just for the record of my painting tool and i'm just going to kind of make myself you can go to the side you can go down just make yourself a whole bunch of chaotic black marks now i'm not even washing my utensil i'm just going to pick up some brown and i'm going to make myself a whole bunch of chaotic brown marks now i'm going to oh maybe i'll put one or two more over here and now i'm going to pick up some of that rust color and i'm going to do the same thing just kind of make myself a couple of chaotic marks and then i'm going to do the same thing with white kind of the white is going to kind of fill in the spaces and if you hit one another great no worries there so we're going to use some white to just kind of fill in those spaces and now that i've kind of got a good assortment what i'm really going to do is loosely blend them in for the most part i'm going to be going from like top to bottom or bottom to top but once i've got them blended i don't want to over blend them i don't want it to be a solid color so as i'm doing this i'm not going to be pushing hard and i'm not going to be um like trying to scrub them in together so i'm just going to kind of use my brush my brush my painting utensil to get these to kind of look like they belong together so once you've got it for the most part kind of blended in like this and you can see i'm not over blending it and if you bump into this line great this is an abstract painting you're supposed to you know throw caution to the wind and not really care about stuff like that now what i'm going to do is i'm going to wipe my palette knife off on my paper towel and i'm going to be picking up a lot of white and i'm going to be using the white to make this background soft and like it's rustic kind of venetian buildings with all kinds of stone work on them and now i'm using more paint and i'm pressing less hard i'm almost just kind of laying the paint on top of that existing um color so really i'm using heavy paint and you can go from the sides if you want there to look like there's a top of a building you can almost do like um a firm line but we've got a big huge bridge that's going to be covering a lot of this in a little while so you can go left to right you can bring it down like this whatever is visually appealing for you we are going for a lighter color but we're not going for total white we don't want to white out here this is just really um to make sure that we have some nice thick paint on here and to give it that nice rustic real old italian kind of look to it um but you'll you'll get your your rhythm or your groove you might want to lay your painting down that sometimes that makes it easier to get into a rhythm of this loose type painting style and again i'm hardly pressing my canvas at all i'm really just using a lot of paint kind of laying it on there and then just using a really loose touch to get these colors to kind of blend in together they're not going to blend in 100 i don't want them to i really want to keep the um the essence of these kind of broken lines and you know some some stucco kind of looking paint you want to make sure that you get it all the way up to the top i'm going to get this one area in through here and again we don't want it all white so you do want to definitely make sure that you blend some of that in there and then we are gonna be using our paintbrush for the next step that number i think it's a number five brush so once you've got this all blended as much as you want it to be you can put this painting knife away get out your brush and get ready for the next step all right so what i'm going to do for the next step is i'm mixing the color for my my water so i'm going to be using phthalo green brown black and white so really what i'm going to be going for is oops i keep hitting my knee sorry about that i'm going to be going for like a soft um murky kind of green because these waters in venice in the canal they are the most unusual green color and i and i i'm sure it has something to do with like the algae that's in the canals and stuff like that so that's the kind of color i'm going for so i've got my phthalo green i'm gonna be putting some brown in it that's gonna represent the dirt in my opinion and then i'm going to be adding gray which is black and white so i recommend don't over add colors you can always slowly add more if you need to you can add quite a bit of brown but when it comes to adding the black and white just do a little bit at a time and then you can adjust it accordingly but if you try and add a super ton in it right off the bat you might take it to a place that you can't reverse it um but if that happens you can certainly add a little bit more phthalo green back to it um but again i'm going from just a a soft almost um desaturated kind of kind of green here so i'm adding a little bit more of the brown it's still a touch too bright for me a touch of black and a touch of white and i'm just going to keep mixing it until i get it into the color space that i want and i'm i'm almost there i think i want maybe a little bit lighter and a little bit grayer so i'm going to add a touch more white and a touch more black and you can see this is just a you know uh a process that you might take you a couple of minutes to accomplish but once you get it you've got it and you might want yours more green or more yellow or more brown or more gray than i do but this is about where i'm going with mine so once you've got your your perfect green watercolor we're going to be using the palette knife for the next step so you can just get ready all right so what we're going to be doing for the next step is we're painting in our water we're going to be doing it with our fancy palette knife and we're going to be using our custom green as well as black and white so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to be scooping up a whole bunch of my custom green and just kind of applying it in some big globs onto my painting and you don't have to get a whole bunch of our perfect coverage you'll see why in a second because we're going to be getting it to blend in with some additional colors but i'm just kind of getting it on here in a in a messy kind of fashion and once i've got pretty good coverage on there now what i'm going to do is i'm going to start adding white along the right top side and around the bottom i'm not washing my tool i'm just picking up some white in through here and i'm just going to kind of add with my fancy tool some white along the edges here and we'll get it to mix in in a minute but right now i'm just kind of getting it onto my canvas so i have um something there to to work with in a minute and then i'm going to do the same thing down at the bottoms edge so i'm just kind of getting some white on my on my painting tool and applying it to this bottom right hand corner and down along the bottom edge of the canvas and then what i'm going to do once i've got it on there you can see my paint is still pretty darn wet so now i'm just going to kind of loosely start blending that white into the green coming to the left and you can see how it just creates such beautiful little streaks and this color variation which is awesome and again this is the time when i'm hardly touching my um canvas at all i'm really just kind of letting the paint work itself into itself and not really bringing it too much over here but i do want to make sure if there's any little vacant spots that i've got it but i'd like it to stay kind of on the darker side in the middle and then as i get over to this left hand side hold on let me just make sure i've got this all up in through here once i've got um once i come over to the left hand side i'm gonna just kind of use the remnants of my on my brush whatever brush see there i go i'm just going to call it a brush the whole time hope you can stay with me when i do that just going to kind of work some of these colors off and make sure that i've got good coverage throughout that water now i'm going to just wipe it on my paper towel and pick up a little bit of black and i'm going to do the same thing on this left hand side so i'm going to add my black over in through this section down into this little corner down below and now i'm going to start moving it to the right and getting it to blend in with those um with the watercolor and i do want to make sure that i get all the way down to the bottom so i think i'm going to actually have to pick up a little bit more green so i can make sure that i've got this whole area covered and then we are going to be using this same palette knife for the next step so when you get your water all nice and painted on here you can wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to be doing for the next step is we are creating the outline for our bridge we're going to be using our palette knife and we're going to be using black paint um i'm going to be providing with a couple of marks uh we'll just make a couple of dots connect those and hopefully by the time we've got this done it'll look something like a bridge when when you're doing this though i do want to kind of forewarn you or give you the freedom to let happen what's going to happen if you haven't used one of these for trying to make detail work the lines are going to be skinny in some spots and thicker in other spots don't worry that's what this is all about just enjoying the process and letting a little bit of chaos happen on your canvas so i'm going to be using um again my palette knife i'm gonna put some black paint on it um you don't need a whole lot when we're working on just making marks right now so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna come up from where my water meets my background about maybe three inches or so and then i'm going to make myself a horizontal line that's going to meet my water so something like that and again it doesn't have to be perfect then i'm going to come up about two inches from that and make myself another little mark and you don't really have to do anything with this mark right now it's just kind of a placeholder for something we're going to do in a little while and then i'm going to come up about another three inches and make myself a mark up there then i'm going to come over to the center of my canvas so somewhere about here and i'm going to come up from my water's edge maybe about two and a half inches it's probably somewhere between this mark and this mark is where i've got it so i'm going to make myself a little bit of a dot in through there then i'm going to come on the right hand side of my canvas and we'll be able to connect all of these dots in a minute on my right hand side of the canvas i'm going to come in maybe about four inches and i'm going to make myself a horizontal line that's about three and a half to four inches tall that's to meet my water's edge and just go up vertically i don't want it to be taller than this one so that gives you a good point of reference that you want it to be a little bit shorter than this one and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to make another mark up the side of this that's maybe about an inch and a half up here so just a little bit of a mark right in through there so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to connect this mark to the edge of this line in through here and when i do this i want to touch this dot right here so i'm going to be doing it with an arcing motion and for me the easiest way to do this and make kind of like a natural arc is to keep my eye on the prize which is always the next the next mark but you have to kind of see the whole picture too so you can start from here and go up or you can start from here and go up that way for me it's going to be easier to go from left to right because it's a more gradual and i can as i'm doing it i can keep the arc going what you don't want to happen is you do a straight line to here and a straight line to here you want an arc but this is how high you want it to go so if i haven't scared you enough already just watch me and you can you could even pencil it in if you wanted to first but this is how i'm going to do it i'm going to start right here and i'm going to watch my prize which is the next dot and i'm going to be doing it in an arcing motion so i know i want to kind of come up and because we're using this odd tool your line is going to be broken so if you if you make a mark that you're not totally happy with don't worry about it you can always kind of correct it with an additional kind of mark itself so i've got mine all nice and arching i'm digging how it's looking it it is definitely a continual arc to me and you can see my line went wide here i'm okay with that and then now that i've got that arc in i'm going to make myself another arc but i'm going to come in from here maybe about an inch inch and a half i'm going to make myself another little marker and now i want to connect this marker to this corner and i want to bring it as high as here so we're going to do another pretty severe arc um and you want to try and keep it continual as you go so here we go i'm loading i'm loading my tool and again i want it to come up as high as that but i still want it to look like an arc so i'm gonna start over here and i'm i'm consciously kind of visually picturing it and how it's going to go right now so i'm going up up up and away i'm going to continue to keep my my arcing motion i'm reloading my tool here i want to bring it just as high as that one and then my prize is down in through here so i've just reloaded my brush and i'm just kind of skipping my tool about here and i've got myself a nice arc in through that way now i've gotta create another one somewhere in through here so i'm gonna kind of split the difference if i was to kind of get a center point from here to here i'd say that would land me probably almost a little bit to the left of the center of my canvas so maybe somewhere in through here this little mark in there somewhere in there and now i'm going to make myself another arc that's going to end up maybe somewhere in this vicinity this doesn't have to be perfect this is just the inside arc of the bridge where they're where they're going under but you do want it to still have a little bit of a curve to it so i've got my um my painting tool here i think i'm going to use my short side this side right here because i'm not going very far and i still want it to arc a little bit so that's going to be my inside little edge and now i've got to attend to the rest of my bridge here so we've got the bottom in place we have a marker right in through here which is going to land you're going to do another arc it's going to land just maybe about a half of an inch above this one right here so if you want to make yourself another little a little another little mark you can certainly do that and so you're almost doing the same one as this but it's going to end up looking wider on this side so we can have some perspective like the bridge is going farther away over there so now that i've got that on there and i want it to come up above here maybe about a half of an inch or so so if you need if you need to mark it feel free feel free to do so you could even mark it there and then just kind of follow this arc down into this vicinity something like that and then you can just kind of travel along this way again you be mindful that you want to keep that arcing motion so um you don't want it to be too too straight of a line sometimes i'm i'm tipping my my brush at a little my brush see there i go again my painting tool at a little bit of an angle so it gives me it exposes or gives me the paint that's built up on the other side so that's going to be that line excellent so now i have this mark here and this mark here these are going to be the straight edges at the top of the bridge but i need them to stop somewhere and on this bridge there's a little um center meeting point so i'm going to come to the from the um left or from here i'm going to move to the right maybe about an inch inch and a half and i'm going to be putting a vertical line that's going to go i would say a little bit further than half the distance between here and here so something maybe like that and then i'm gonna move to the right about an inch and a half two inches and do a similar line only it's going to be slightly shorter um so it's not going to go as tall so maybe something like that now when i go to do these vertical lines i want them to meet just shy of the top of that line the tippy top of there so if i come down maybe about a half of an inch or so now these lines can be straight whereas these were arcing these ones you can just kind of go right right for that mark so this is going to be more of a direct of a direct line so something like that and again if you if you want your lines to be thicker or more pronounced certainly add more paint to your brush it's always easier to add paint than it is to take it away so start cautiously and then and end optimistically so i'm going to come down here just a little bit of a way and i'm going to get it to meet the the tip of that something like this and again you can certainly keep adding paint to your to your applicator tool as necessary and then i just need a little roof top on my on my bridge so i add adding more more black paint and this is just going to be two diagonal lines something like that and something like that and we are going to be using this same tool for the next step so once you've got your outline for your for your bridge you can wash and dry your painting knife and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting under the underside of the bridge i'm going to be using my palette knife and i'm going to be using brown black and white and really all i'm doing is getting it to be a darker color i'm re i'm just scraping i'm not doing any fancy um painting techniques i am just rubbing it on there because it's going to take on some of the look of the colors that are underneath it so i just want it to be like a dirty cement kind of color um and if you dip your brush accidentally in some of your green like i just did no worries and you can really as you're scraping like this you can really get it nice and up to the edges um you don't need to do anything fancy here just get the whole color on there you can you know figure out what way is going to work best for you as you are just kind of pulling the paint in all of these little directions and you just want to get it all the way down to the water's edge we're going to be doing a more defined water's edge in a little while so that's all we're going to do for that step so we are going to use the same brush for the next step so once you've got the underside of your bridge painted you can wash and dry your palette knife and get ready for the next step all right so we're going to do for the next step is we're painting ourselves a little dock type area so how i'm going to do this is i'm using my palette knife and i'm going to start with some white paint to just kind of get the the flat top into shape and then i'll show you how we can get a little bit of dimension on the sides of it which would kind of be more cement i think so i'm going to use a little bit of white on my palette knife and what i'm going to do is i'm going to come down here maybe i would say about an inch and a half something like that and then i'm going to pull it to the right i mean the left about a another inch and a half or so and really making kind of just like steps something like that and then just pull it drag it to the side like that and then i'm gonna um add a darker area underneath so you can still use um the white paint just to kind of give you visually the an edge to the cement part that's underneath so if i do something like that and something like that i'm gonna wipe my brush off my brush my palette knife off on my paper towel and i'm gonna pick up a little bit of black and brown and just drag that um the white along with those other colors and you can see how it just beautifully makes a nice gradient and um like a cement type look to it's great and now i want to just add a little bit of um some shadow up at the top of this so it looks like it's going back so i'm just going to put a little bit more brown and maybe some black on my on my palette knife and just kind of rub in just up in through here so it looks a little bit um like it's receding and it's maybe a little bit more shadowed by the side of the bridge so something like that and then i'll put a little three-dimensional edge on it so i'm going to use some brown and green and white as if it's maybe been weathered by by the water oh and yellow i have yellow on my palette so i picked up a little yellow too so this is going to be just the edge of that little that little dock and again you can really have this as broken as you want it to be um or as perfect as you want it to be and that looks pretty good to me so you can you can fiddle with it all you want but that's that's gonna work for me and we're going to use let's see we're going to use our brush the actual paint brush for the next step so once you get done your little dock area you can put your palette knife away and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the windows or the openings on our bridge so i'm going to be using my small brush we will use the palette knife too but we're going to start with our small brush and we're going to use black paint to start so what i'm going to do so i have kind of control over my lines i'm actually going to take a little bit of water and water down a little bit of my black paint so it's more of like an ink consistency and i'm going to stay kind of true to the to the original bridge with the number of openings that it has but if you want to feel free to make yours as have more or less windows i'm sure not many people are going to count them on you so i'm going to put five on the left because there's more but it's cut off in this in this painting and then six on the right i want them to go pretty close to my black line up here but they don't have to touch it so i'm going to keep them probably about i don't know maybe a quarter of an inch to a half of an inch away from that top line and you can just kind of um go for it or you could i did not measure mine out um but what i'm going to do is i'm going to start about a half of an inch away from this line in through here and the only trick that i want to give you not trick but um guidance is the sides of your windows you want them to stay vertical when you're working at an on an angled object like this our brains want us to angle those side edges so just consciously try and keep those vertical and that's going to help it to make it look more realistic in its abstract world so here we go i'm going to do my first one so i'm going to put my vertical lines in through here maybe i make that a little bit wider and then i will curve the top and they're very close to one another so there's not much space in between so i might plan them out first so i want five on this side so this is two three and they're going to get bigger as they come down four come on i just i just got it by this hair of its chinny chin chin and oh i think i'm gonna make my this last one go off okay so there's my five so now i'm going to just connect my tops like that with a little arc like that and i'm not concerned at all if my lines are perfect right now because we're going to be coloring these in with our palette knife but i do want to make sure that i've got them you know in as good of a spot as i want them and i think i think these are are pretty good and then i'm gonna move over to the right side and i'm gonna put six on the right side so these are clearly gonna be much smaller so i'm gonna start somewhere in through here so this is gonna be one and i'm just i'm just guessing here two hopefully i've given myself enough room three four five oh look at that just enough room and six and then i will um arc the top of them and we've got one two three four you guys could probably count on your own huh you probably don't need me to count to six five six and then i'm going to take my palette knife and i'm painting them in with black so i wanted to use my palette knife to paint it in because i like this scrapey look because you can actually see some of the colors underneath it so i'm just one now that i've got the shape in there i'm going to just pick up a little bit of black paint and just scrape it in these windows so that way i've got some additional colors that i can see because sometimes these windows they have shutters that they that are open or closed and sometimes they have curtains that they use so there's many different ways that these windows can be viewed so i'm just kind of going for a real nice abstracty kind of impressionistic way to to view them and if you wanted more colors you could i've seen them put like red curtains and stuff in these windows so you can really just have fun with this and make it whatever version of the rialto bridge windows you would like and i'm just going to kind of keep loading my my little tool here and getting well i've got some good wet paint on there i can just kind of dab it in there and i'm using the smaller side of my of my painting tool at this point maybe you use your bigger side whatever maybe you're working on a bigger canvas than i am this is such a beautiful bridge i got to see it in person a couple of times and it's it's just such an iconic and beautifully built landmark so we hopefully are doing it justice with our little abstract paintings of it but we're gonna use this same brush or painting tool for the next step so once you've got all of your windows painted in you can all wash it and dry it and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the main opening um in the center of the bridge i'm going to use my palette knife you could certainly use your small brush if you wanted to make the arc and then paint it in with a palette knife but i'm just going to go for it so i'm going to be using black brown white and i'll probably use a touch of my green too just so i can carry that green somewhere else into the painting so i'm just going to start with a little bit of brown on my um painting utensil and i'm going to just make myself a vertical line over here on the right hand side of that area i'm gonna do the same thing on the left hand side of that area i think i'm gonna need a little bit of black on my my painting tool just to give myself this little bit of an arc up at the top and again you can have fun with how this works for you and then i'm just going to kind of scrape it down i'm going to add a touch of white and a little bit of that green and just kind of scrape it down into here i want it to be a little bit darker than the actual siding of the um of here so if it's not dark enough like i don't feel mine's dark enough right now just add a touch more black to it and just kind of manipulate it until you've got it as much as you want and then we're going to use the same brush our same paint i can't get it right i'm so sorry we'll use the same painting tool for the next step so you can just wash it and dry and get ready for the next step all right so we're gonna do for the next step is we're finishing our buildings so this is the all that background that we did it's meant to be uh abstract impressionistic kind of version of all the buildings that are behind the rialto bridge so i wanted to put a little bit more color in it so what i'm going to do is i'm going to use my palette knife i'm going to use some of that orange color i might use a little bit of brown but i'll also use some of my green um and bring the green of the water up the building because a lot of these buildings they almost have like moss at the bottom of them from them being wet all the time so to authenticate this i'm going to put a little bit of green coming up the side so i'm just going to stick a tiny bit a really tiny bit of orange on my palette knife and i'm just going to kind of in this center area just pull up a couple of strategically placed little streaks there's lots of beautiful colored buildings throughout venice so you can really have fun with um getting them oh i guess i'm going to paint with my finger too i want to pull some of this down into the water as if it's reflecting down into the water a little bit and again you can have as much fun as you want to um we are going to be doing one more step on the water too so to get these edges done so if you put too much orange in your water like i just did don't worry we'll be able to um rectify it in a few minutes i think i'm also going to put a little bit more maybe some brown um i just want this you know center area to be i don't know i have a little bit more oomph in it um and then i'm going to bring a little bit of that green over onto this right hand side as if maybe the side of the building has um you know got a little moss on it i just picked up a little white i didn't say i was going to use white but i am using white and i'm going to bring it down at the bottom of this building and again just have fun let happen what's going to happen i think i'm going to pull touch of that orange over here too maybe this has maybe this building has a little bit of orange on it as well and you could i suppose put this orange wherever you want you could even put bring some some more brown or that rust color into wherever you want maybe you want to pop in some some strategic windows or something so you just have fun with you know creating your own abstract version of this and then we're going to use this same brush for the next step so once you've got your buildings completed you can wash and dry this palette knife which i probably just called a brush a second ago and get ready for the next step alright so what we're going to do for the next step is we're coloring in painting in the sides of the bridge so that's going to be this section and this section right here and all i'm going to do is i'm going to pick up white paint with my palette knife and i'm just going to scrape it on there i want to scrape it so that way i still see some of the colors underneath it so in essence just ends up looking like a lighter version of the buildings behind it um and i'm just bringing it right up to the edge of my um of the outline that i did and i'm going to do it to this section and again if you had lines that you didn't like on that were created for that outline you can just kind of soften them by putting this extra white on there and then i'm going to do this little section here with some white so again i'm just kind of putting white paint on there once it's there i'm going to just scrape it so you can still see some of the colors that are underneath it and it just ends up being like a lighter version of the um of the buildings behind it and then we're going to use this same tool for the next step so once you've got your your bridge painted in here you can wash this tool and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing our railing so that's going to be this little section in through here i'm using a palette knife i'm going to be using mostly black and white i might go in for a little brown but i think it's going to be mostly black and white so i'm going to be doing a bunch of vertical lines and you're going to find as you go through this process that you might want more than me you might want less than me you might want to just tap your brush like your brush sometimes i don't feel very smart your your utensil your tool your painting tool but just keep in mind you do want to keep these vertical they don't have to be equally spaced apart you just want to have a whole mess of them um and just keep loading your your brush and your utensil your painting utensil i've been painting with a brush for about 20 years so this palette knife has been recently introduced to me so i am i am having um a fun time making sure i call it the right thing and then when you get to this smaller area it might be a little bit challenging to to get it in here but you can you can figure out a way to do it this is this is the carefree style of abstracts and we just have fun letting the tool work for us and do what it wants to and then once you've got the um the black part on here what i'm going to do is i'm just going to wipe my utensil off on my clean paper towel and i'm gonna go in for the top highlight of the railing itself so i've got a whole bunch of white on my brush and i'm just gonna do a broken messy white line on top of here make it look like a nice highlight and once i've got this on here what i'll do is i can use that same white and work it in between um the black um posts to the to the railing i think that's what these co when they go with the vertical kind are the posts um and then the one on top is the railing part and you can make this as decorative as you want the actual um rialto bridge the these have a more of a decorative dowel part to them they're actually got like a rounded um center to them so if you want to make yours even more fancy you certainly can but i'm gonna just go for something very fun and free form here and again as i get towards the smaller ones i'm going to use the smaller side of my painting tool and if you want to add an additional you know line in through here you just go with whatever you're feeling you have fun with it if you want to add more highlights or more dots or anything you want you just do whatever is coming naturally to you because that's what this style of painting is all about you just go with your intuition and have fun and enjoy the process and then we're going to use the same tool for the next step so once you've got your railing all nice and pink so i'm digging this once you get this all nice and done you can wash and dry that tool and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the highlight on this upper section so this is going to be this little opening and maybe around our windows i'm going to use my palette knife i'm going to use white paint you could totally use a brush if you wanted to so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start in this section i'm going to bring down white and just kind of bring it along the side so i'm just kind of again elevating this color to be a little bit brighter than um the background color so i'm just taking a little bit of white and i want to be able to see some of that color underneath so again you don't have to go too in in detail with it just kind of add some little white pops of white paint in between your windows i've just got a little bit of white paint on the edge of my brush my tool and i'm just adding it in through there and then i'll take the little corner of my brush and just add some little little pops of highlight and this can help you to if you have if your edges weren't exactly everything that you had hoped that they would be around your windows this can help you to accentuate or uh you know change them a little bit so again i just kind of add a little bit of this white in between it will you know help to make my windows pop a little bit more and then i'll add a little bit above them with with my fancy tool and you can you know get it as bold or as soft as you want i just went into my black area that's okay i'll wipe it away with my finger that's the joy of this i just i think it um it excites me to paint like this because it takes the the pressure off you know if something happens blame it on your tool you know i i did that because that's what my tool made me do so just you know have as much fun as you want to let it let happen what's going to happen and then we're going to use the same tool for the next step but you i guess you don't have to wash it but if you want to wash it you certainly can just get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're painting the roof on our bridge i'm going to use my palette knife and i'm going to use white paint um the only trick about this is i want it to be a little bit thicker on this left hand side than the right hand side because i do want to keep a little authenticity and make it look have a little bit of a dimensional element so how i'm going to do this is um this roof has a little bit of a curve to it um so i've got my paint on my knife and i'm just going to kind of bring it across and then just kind of bring it down like this you might get some kind of little bit of an effect you might not who's to know right but i do want it to be a little bit smaller or thinner as it gets towards this right hand side so i started it pretty wide here and then as it goes towards this right i'm going to make it thinner and thinner and then by the time i get to the this tippy top part here it's going to be really thin i just want to make sure that i have something on there that you can see so i'm going to put a thin thinner line in through there and then same thing over here on the right hand side and then i'll go down that the full right hand side with a nice layer of white paint and if you've you know gotten rid of all of your black what should be kind of like a shadowy area you can certainly put that back in too if you need to but again we're going abstract here so if it if it doesn't work out the way that you had totally planned it's all right and then we're going to use this same tool for the next step so once you've got your roof on you can wash and dry your painting tool and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're finishing our water i'm going to be using my palette knife and really what this step is is i need to make sure there's enough shadow um and or reflection but it's more shadowy by my structures so i'm going to be using black and green and probably white too but the dominants are going to be black and green so i'm going to start with black paint and i don't need this to go too far into my water it's really just meant to be a separation or to tell you where that structure ends and the water begins and so i've got black paint on my painting tool and i'm just kind of going over here to the right and i'm just really pushing my paint i'm gonna pick up a little bit more just so i make sure that i've got enough on there and i don't need to bring it much further than my bridge even though i brought it a little bit further but that's okay i will i will correct that in a minute i just picked up some of my green and i'm just going to kind of almost manipulate this left to right so it works its way into the full body of water and again you don't need it to come out very far at all just kind of let it let it happen as it as it needs to happen i think i want to make the bottom of this building a little bit darker too so just to show that maybe it's it's been weathered a little bit more than the top of the building so i'm just kind of pulling these colors up and and down into it just so it it looks a little bit more natural and then i'm picking up some more of my green just to make sure this black really looks like it belongs there and it's not just a static line and that looks pretty good to me now i'm going to put a little bit i wiped my pallet knife off on my paper towel i'm picking up just a little bit of white to make sure i've got enough little white caps in this corner and it's going into the daylight underneath the bridge so i just added a little bit of white onto my brush to tell the story that we're we're working our way into the light over there and then if you needed to if you made this too dark you could certainly just put a touch of white back on your brush just to get some little ripples going in through here there's always a lot of ripples in the canals with all these gondolas that are going through so the more ripples you have the more movement it's going to look like there is and and it all tells it all tells a really cool story and then i need to put a little bit over here on the left hand side because right now where we put these um this little docky area they it doesn't look like it's going into the water very naturally so i'm gonna add my shadow and my little ripples there too so i'm gonna stick a little bit of black paint on my brush and just kind of get myself some little ripples happening in through here maybe if i've got one in through there and then at the bottom of here and again i'm just kind of taking my utensil and wiggling it kind of left to right and if i don't want it to look too staticky then i'm going to add a little bit of the green back onto my brush and just kind of get them to intermingle with one another and that adds these really natural looking little ripples and if you wanted to you could certainly add some white but i think i think that looks good to me so that's all i'm gonna do for that is good i'm gonna use the same tool for the next step so once you've got your water finished you can wash and dry your palette knife and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are doing the first layer of the gondola we're going to be using our palette knife and we're just going to be using black paint so these gondolas can be really old well most of them are long and slender but some can be longer than others because they carry more people than others so i'm making mine wicked long um and it's because it's gonna carry a few people in it you might want to make yours smaller however you feel fit to make it is totally fine by me but i'm going to be making mine i'm going to have it starting about halfway between these two marks and about an inch below my my buildings and it's going to be coming down at an angle it's going to be maybe halfway the bottom of it's going to be about halfway between here and the bottom of my canvas and then it's going to slightly come up and poke up probably in the middle between these two areas maybe about an inch or so below when i'm doing this i am very mindful that i'm going to have a gondolier and a couple of people in my in my boat i know that these boats are really really narrow and really shallow so the length of my boat can be really as long as i want but when i go to make the height of the boat i don't want to make it too too tall because i still want to have a gondolier in here and i want his head to end up being below my bridge yours certainly could be taller if you want but visually you'll be able to see it better if that head lands below the the darkness of the the colors of the underneath of the bridge so that's my thoughts you can certainly modify yours as much as you want to but here we go i'm going to make myself a couple of little markers and then i'm going to connect them i'm just using black paint i'm using my palette knife so i'm going to make myself a little bit of a marker in through here and then i'm going to make myself a little bit of a marker in through here that's going to be the front and the rear end of my gondola boat and i'm going to make mine with the little edges curled up and in there's so many different variations of gondolas so if yours doesn't look exactly like mine i'm sure it's going to be okay and then i'm going to make myself a kind of an arcing type motion to get these two marks to connect and again you you'll find your rhythm with with your utensil and if you don't get it in a perfect shape don't worry because we've got all kinds of shadows or reflections and stuff underneath that we'll be putting in the water so it's totally fine and then when i come up so that's going to be the bottom of my boat when i come up i know that i i want this tip to stay pretty darn slender so i'm really not going to do a whole bunch of anything with that and my thickest part is going to be in the center of the boat but it's only going to be maybe about an inch wide so i'm really not going to beef this up too much i'm just going to kind of come in through here make sure i have enough paint on my on my utensil and then i'm just going to bring it i know it needs to curve up a little bit over here but not a terribly high amount and then i can just kind of move this paint into that direction and then i'm just going to use my utensil to finish painting i can just kind of move this paint along and if you can still see some of the green or some of your watercolor underneath that don't worry about it because we're going to be doing all kinds of fun stuff to it in a little bit i think i'm going to just shape my my edge here a little bit more and then while i have this black paint on my brush while i'm doing the gondola i can certainly do my little reflection while i'm here so this is something that we can do just with with the bow itself and i'm just using my black paint and as i come down into this vicinity i'll use a little bit of black and green and this is just going to give me a little bit of a reflection of my boat and we are going to use this same tool for the next step so once you've got your first layer of your gondola and maybe a little bit of a reflection you can wash and dry this tool and get ready for the next step all right so what we're doing for the next step is we're doing the first layer of our people and yes i'm using my palette knife so good luck i'm just kidding so i when i'm doing this so i am just having fun i'm enjoying the process these people are representational they don't have to be perfect um i'm making my gondolier that's just a bunch of shapes and if the shapes aren't perfect i'm so okay with that and then my people who are enjoying their gondola ride are just gonna be the backs of some seats and some balls on the top for their heads so think of it in those simplistic forms and and you'll be just fine so i'm gonna do just black paint and i am going to um put some black paint on my small edge for my gondolier himself i'm going to have him standing somewhere a little bit to the left of this corner here so he's going to be a little bit to the left and i'm going to make myself a vertical line that's just gonna meet my boat something like that now i know that he's gonna have some legs so i'm gonna make just a little bit wider of a line for one leg and then i'm gonna make another little leg right there and whatever happens maybe he's got big pants maybe he's got little pants who cares then he has to have some kind of a head or a hat and some shoulders and a shirt and an arm right so i know that that's going to be the top of my head so his shirt is going to come the bottom of his shirt is going to be a little bit past the halfway point so somewhere around here and i'm just going to make it the bottom of it a little bit wider than his pants and of course you can certainly adjust this as you go don't feel like it needs to be anything perfect i'm gonna make um his shoulders are gonna be uh i want this to kind of be the top of his head so i'm gonna put his shoulders a little bit lower than that so something like that so i'm going to make myself a rectangle for his torso so something like this where his shirt comes out a little bit farther than his pants so ta-da there's his torso and maybe i'll close his legs a little bit he doesn't have to have his legs spread open that far and then i need um an arm that's gonna you know steer the gondola so i'm going to put mine on the left hand side and it's going to be out kind of far and it's just going to be a line i'm not doing anything super fancy i just kind of want it to be look like it's long enough that it's not you know that he's not a a pirate with a half of an arm because pirates have half of an arms right but they have hooks well maybe he could have a hook you make your gondola or whatever kind of arm that you would like and then i need a little head so i'm gonna have a hat so i'm really just gonna put some kind of little circle make sure the neck is wide enough so something like that and then i'm gonna put a horizontal kind of sideways line something like that and again i'm just i'm just having fun your hat's gonna come out different than mine your arm's gonna come out different than mine it's whatever happens happens if you need to you know put a little i think i feel like he needs a little bigger of a shoulder just just have fun um maybe a little thicker of a neck that looks good and then i need a big huge long gondolier um oh gosh should i look this one up ro gondola row row i don't know whatever the thing is that steers the boat it needs to go from his arm into the water and they're super duper long so i'm gonna go a little bit past his hand something like this and then just make myself a really long diagonal mark some kind of impressionistic little mark but you got to see it right so i need a i need to i need to work on my visibility of my poll something there you go yeah you can see it now all right and now i'm going to make my two little people or my three little people or however many people people you want to put so somewhere in this vicinity i'm going to make a couple of horizontal lines so i've got a horizontal line there and maybe another one in through here and then i'm going to make diagonal lines coming off of them like this like this is the side of the seat like they're kind of lounging back and then just color that in so you can take your little fancy tool and just color that part in with black and same thing over here just color that in with black and now just make yourself a couple little bumps on top of it so i'm gonna make maybe one bump there and maybe a taller bump so maybe they look like two different size people so there's those two little bumps these are very very detailed people that were painting and then i'm gonna put maybe another little one in through here and maybe this person has a ponytail oh there's a ponytail and that's all i'm going to do for my first layer of my people so we are going to be using the same tool for the next step so you can wash it and dry it and get ready all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we're doing the first layer of our poles these are the poles that they tie all of their gondolas and boats to so i'm going to be using my palette knife and i'm going to be using white paint i'm making two pole posts or poles i'm going to make one that's a little bit to the right of this dock and then i'm going to make another one that's a little bit more to the right and it's bigger so this one i've made a little dot right to right next to my post or my dock and i'm going to bring this one up just about to um where the railing is so how i'm going to do this is i'm just going to make a i'm using my fancy painting tool i'm going to make a vertical line like this and i'm gonna widen it by just pulling my tool to the right you could pull yours to the left you could pull it to the right whatever you want i'm only making mine about between a half or maybe like a eighth of an inch to a quarter of an inch wide not wide at all and then i'm gonna do the same thing for the next one only this one's going to be wider because it's closer to us so i've come down past this block and over to the right so to the right of this one maybe about an inch or so you can start about there and it's going to go directly up to about here to about the top of the railing or maybe a little bit taller than that so i'm going to start with my um vertical line just to get it started and then once i've got that line on there then i can just take my my my um easels getting in my way so i just turned it upside down so this one's going to be probably about more a quarter of an inch to an a half of an inch wide and i'm just using my tool to widen that line i'm adding more paint to my brush now and this again is going to give it that nice broken edge to the line if you wanted yours perfect you can certainly make yours as perfect as you want and then we need to start a little reflection for these um for these posts so all i'm going to do is i want it to come off at a little bit of an angle here so i'm just going to take that um that tool and just kind of put a little bit of white paint broken in my water like that and then do just a smudge over and through here because you're not going to see much of this because it would it would get broken up by that structure so something like that and we are going to use the same tool for the next step so once you've got your first layer of your poles as well as with their reflections you can wash and dry this tool and get ready for the next step all right so what we're gonna do for the next step is we are finishing our gondola and our people i'm gonna use my palette knife and i'm gonna be using red and white and possibly some black and possibly some green but mostly red and white so i'm going to put a tiny bit of red on my brush and i want to give my gondoliers some red on his hat so i'm just kind of putting a little bit of a mark on the hat and i'm going to give him a little bit of red in his shirt and then i'm going to wipe that's all i'm doing just making some marks then i'm gonna wipe my tool off on my clean paper towel and i'm gonna give my people and their chairs some highlights so again i'm really just kind of making some subtle marks that are breaking up the flat black so i'm just putting a touch up at the top and then maybe just pulling it down a little bit and if you do too much again you can always bring back the black there's no there's no harm in doing that so i do want the chairs to look like they're going down into the gondola a little bit so i pulled it down past that um the edge now i'm going to do the same thing on my on my gondolier i'm going to give him a little bit of highlight so i gave him red for a shirt but now i'm just adding a little bit of information to tell people you know maybe this is the edge the bottom edge of his shirt maybe there's a little highlight on his arm you know you can just have fun maybe there's a a touch of a of a highlight on the top of his hat you know any any little bits of information maybe down his pants we are gonna redo the um pole in a moment because we're gonna paint um a little bit over it when we're doing the boat right now so if you paint it over there don't worry you've got you're gonna have another shot at it and what i'm gonna do now i'm gonna just take my highlight color and add a little bit of highlight onto my boat so i know that i want like little highlights on the tips and then definitely on the edge the the edge that's closest to us but you can also put a little bit of highlight on that at that farther edge so i'm going to just put white on my brush my brush my painting tool and i'm going to start with a couple little highlights over here then i know that this corner is gonna connect to that corner but you know the people and the gondolier need need room as well so i'm gonna bring it somewhere in this vicinity i'm gonna just reload here and add some into here and this is a great time you can start you know play with it don't don't feel like it has to be perfect this is you know this is the fun of it you just add you know highlights where you think would look good um if you wanted to bring in some of the color of the water as if it's reflecting onto the boat feel free to do that i'm gonna put a little bit of highlight over on the far edge of the boat so something in through here i can just touch my little tool over on this far edge just so you can really see the edge on top of the water it helps to delineate the people versus the edge of the boat if you can do something like this and again just just have fun with it there's no nobody's grading you on your project today this is all about enjoying the process yeah it looks good and then um i know oh i know what else i have to do um you have to re-identify your pole because the pole's got to be on the outside of the boat and i just put a big highlight in front of it so i'm just picking up a little bit more black on my um brush or the i don't know if it's a pole um the ore that would be what they used to go fishing so we'll we'll we'll we'll think that that's yeah that works and then i think i need to just kind of get this ore thing to look like it's going in the water here all right and then i think we we might just have one or two little more steps to go so we're gonna use this same brush for this for the next step so once you've got your gondola finished you can wash and dry this tool and get ready for the next step all right so what we're going to do for the next step is we are putting the red stripes on our posts or poles here so i'm using my fancy painting tool again and i'm going to be using red paint a lot of these posts have these balls at the top so i'm just going to make myself a little ball at the top i just using the corner of my painting tool and then i'm going to be making sideways kind of stripes along um the posts if you put a little if you can put a little bit of a curve to it that's going to make it look give the object a roundness but if yours just end up flat diagonal it's okay but if any if there's any way where you can kind of just curve it a little bit awesome and you can see i'm just it's kind of blending in a little bit with my white i'm so okay with that and then i'm gonna do the same thing on the other one and you know if you need them brighter just add more red paint i think i want mine a little brighter so i was gonna move on to the next one but i wanted these a little brighter and now i'm going to go ahead and do the other one so just using the corner of my fancy tool and i'm making these ones a little bit closer together because they're further away and then i'm going to put a touch of this red in the water because it would be reflecting and then i will probably pick up a touch of green to break up this line in the water just to make sure that it's really looking reading as a reflection and not an extension of the um post so i used red and now i'm using a little bit of green and black just to make sure that these look like the bottom you know like they're in the water and not you know that's good i think that's it oh maybe a little highlight on the top of the on the top of the ball i think and then we have one tiny little step left to do it's gonna be with your brush so once you've got your your really cool red pinstriped posts done you can get your small brush out and ready for the final step alright so we are on to the final step which is the final step of any painting that's to sign it so i'm going to be using my small brush i'm going to be using black paint but you could totally use whatever color you want i'm going to be signing mine in the bottom left with my initials but you could sign yours with your first name or the date or a symbol or whatever you want is totally fine by me and that is going to conclude this painting i hope you enjoyed the process i hope you painted yourself a really fun abstract painting and i look forward to painting and sipping with you again sometime [Music] you

Channel: Michelle the Painter

Views: 27,010

Keywords: how to paint, paint and sip, acrylic, painting, tutorial, lesson, beginner, simple, easy, artist, painter, Michelle the Painter, michellethepainter, sip and paint, class, step by step, tips, how to, paint, landscape, peaceful, beautiful, best, Italy, Italian, sun, fun, instructions, Venice, Venetian, gondola, gondolier, boat, canal, bridge, abstract, under, green, orange, ripples, waterway, buildings, Adriatic, lagoon, sea, water, standing, Rialto, people, dock, tourist, poles, striped, grand, going, city, San Marco, San Polo, learn

Id: nidX_Q6eAWA

Length: 77min 47sec (4667 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020